Petroleum refineries in North America and abroad are increasingly adding cokers and hydrocrackers to meet future refining challenges from both feedstock (i.e., heavier and more sour) and product perspectives (higher distillate/gasoline ratios with very low sulfur levels). Uplift margins on USGC cokers have recently moved back to over $20 per barrel and as such, represent one of the most critical units in a modern, complex refinery. Unfortunately these new process configurations create very high volumes of solids (a typical world scale delayed coker will produce well over 1 million tons per year or over 3000 tons per day, which would fill 30-35 railcars per day). That's a great deal of solids handling, which for most refiners, is not a core operational competency. Sulfur is a similar story and with North American consumption of molten sulfur expected to flatten while the amount of sulfur production, particularly in the USA, is expected to rapidly increase, export of solid sulfur prill will likely grow in importance as a critical outlet of sulfur by-product.
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