Crude oil refineries produce finished petroleum products through a series of processing steps known as refinery unit operations. The varieties and capacities of process units, along with their operational characteristics, differentiate one refinery from another. Over the years, the refining industry has adopted various metrics to categorize refineries based on their capital investment and upgrading capability. These efforts have resulted in refinery complexity indicators such as the equivalent distillation capacity, the Nelson complexity index and the bottom of the barrel index. Although these metrics have helped quantify the refinery complexity and suitability for various crude oil feed qualities, they fail to provide relevant information for refinery modeling applications.
