Delayed Coker - History

History

Petroleum coke was first made in the 1860s in the early oil refineries in Pennsylvania which boiled oil in small, iron distillation stills to recover kerosene, a much needed lamp oil. The stills were heated by wood or coal fires built underneath them, which over-heated and coked the oil near the bottom. After the distillation was completed, the still was allowed to cool and workmen could then dig out the coke and tar.

In 1913, William Merriam Burton, working as a chemist for the Standard Oil of Indiana refinery at Whiting, Indiana, was granted a patent for the Burton thermal cracking process that he had developed. He was later to become the president of Standard Oil of Indiana before he retired.

In 1929, based on the Burton thermal cracking process, Standard Oil of Indiana built the first delayed coker. It required very arduous manual decoking.

In the late 1930s, Shell oil developed hydraulic decoking using high-pressure water at their refinery in Wood River, Illinois. That made it possible, by having two coke drums, for delayed decoking to become a semi-continuous process.

From 1955 onwards, the growth in the use of delayed coking increased. As of 2002, there were 130 petroleum refineries worldwide producing 172,000 tons per day of petroleum coke. Included in those worldwide data, about 59 coking units were operating in the United States and producing 114,000 tons per day of coke.