The petroleum coke industry is expected to grow owing to growing demand from power plants. It is a byproduct of oil refining that has high heating value and can be used as fuel for power generation.
Fuel-grade petcoke prices, news and commentary by region. Testing ensures that metal and sulfur levels are low enough to protect refining equipment, while keeping carbon content as low as possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The petroleum coke industry uses a lot of energy to produce fuel grade petcoke and calcined petcoke for steel, iron, and aluminum production. That process is very energy-intensive and produces a lot of waste heat that can be used for power generation. Fuel grade petcoke is burned in conventional oil refinery furnaces to generate electricity.
Many of the biggest U.S. refineries embraced tar sands crude when domestic oil prices were depressed and built expensive units called cokers to process it. Those costly cokers make gasoline, diesel fuel and ship fuel, but also generate large volumes of petroleum coke as byproducts.
The resulting coke is often sold as a fuel for power plants, and its high thermal efficiency helps to keep electricity costs down. Port Arthur Steam Energy LP captures the waste heat from three petroleum coke calcining kilns and converts it to steam, most of which is used by the nearby Valero-Port Arthur refinery.
Cement manufacturing is an energy and emission intensive process that accounts for a significant portion of petcoke consumption. Due to its low ash content and high carbon content, petroleum coke makes an excellent fuel for cement kilns. Cement makers often utilize a blend of petcoke and coal to operate their kilns. This efficient fuel utilisation reduces carbon emissions and saves on power costs as compared to conventional thermal coal.
Rising cement and electricity production in developing economies is anticipated to expand the Petroleum Coke industry over the projection period. Calcined petcoke is used as a prebaked anode in the aluminum industry and for producing graphite electrodes in the steel industry. Needle calcined coke is employed as a battery electrode material to produce high-power graphite batteries.
Oxbow is the largest supplier of fuel grade petcoke globally. We source petcoke from every major refiner in the world and deliver it to power plants, industrial consumers and anode bake ovens.
A study by aluminum production specialist Cascade concludes that a global shortage of petcoke is "about as significant to the aluminum industry as the Hall-Heroult process." While there may be some hyperbole in that statement, it is clear that the lack of suitable coke will force profound changes across the smelter industry.
Rain Carbon is one of the world's largest producers of calcined petroleum coke (CPC), a key ingredient in the carbon anodes used in aluminum production. This highly crystalline coke is made from either fluid catalytic cracking decant oil or coal tar pitch, and contains trace metals such as nickel and vanadium.
Cement companies were the first to embrace petcoke as a fuel, but it has since spread widely throughout the economy. The most common use is as a substitute for coal in furnaces, and dozens of industries bring it into open-air fuel depots where they burn it to produce heat. The higher sulfur content of this type of petcoke is known as fuel grade coke.
Amid a gritty industrial heartland, where sprawling oil refineries and steel mills dominate the Lake Michigan shoreline, steaming coke stacks still loom over working-class neighborhoods.
High-grade petcoke that is low in sulphur and heavy metals can be used to produce electrodes for the steel and aluminum industries. But the vast majority of petcoke, which is impure and contains more sulphur, is burned in power plants.
The global petcoke market is expected to grow on the back of rising energy demand and a quick expansion in the construction of steel, aluminium and other manufacturing industries. In addition, growing investment in delayed coking units at refineries will drive industry growth.
The sulphur and other pollutants that are released during the combustion of petroleum coke can cause respiratory problems in people who live in areas with large concentrations of power plants and steel factories. However, the process of gasification of petcoke can convert these pollutants into less harmful substances. This process has been successfully tested at the Polk County Clean Coal Technology Demonstration IGCC plant in Florida, where a blend of 55% petroleum coke and 45% coal is fired to generate electricity.
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