Marathon Petroleum

Lisa Griffin is a chemical engineering major from Flushing, OH. Her third and final co-op semester is in summer 2006 with Marathon Petroleum. We advised Lisa that Marathon consistently puts co-ops in the middle of the action. The greatest value she has gained is putting hands on the otherwise theoretical material covered in classes. http://www.engr.uky.edu/cme/index.html You may have noticed that chemical engineering grads usually demand the highest salaries. Add that to a chemical engineer in the petroleum industry, and you are pretty much at the top. Lisa has earned over $20 per hour during her work sessions and was able to save about $8,000 each semester. I do not use the term "work" loosely here. Read below for details of Lisa's accomplishments. 6/19/06

MY EXPERIENCE

During the spring of 2005, I worked for Marathon Ashland Petroleum LLC, formed in 1998 by the joining of Marathon Oil Company and Ashland Inc. MAP grew to become one of the largest refiners in the nation, the leader in motor fuels in the Midwest and Southeast, a thrivingmarketer of petrochemicals, and a profitable specialty product and asphalt producer. By the time I returned for my second work session in Spring 2006, the company was known as Marathon petroleum. http://www.mapllc.com/

I am now working my third and final session still at the Catlettsburg, Kentucky Refinery which employs approximately one thousand people and is an integral part of Marathon. This time I am in the Controls Division.

During my first term at MAP, I was placed in the design department and really had no idea what to expect. MAP completely exceeded any thoughts or prejudgments. A typical workday is from 7:30-4:00 with a 30 min. lunch. I would get to work, check my email, and quickly start the day. The expectations for each co-op are high and I was given a lot of responsibility. I felt right at home because all the engineers treated me as if I were one of them. Any employee at MAP would take the time to explain projects until I understood. MAP consists of a team of people working together helping each other improve the company.

I had three major projects and several minor projects this 1 st term. My first major project was to update the entire Berwanger Relief valve database. This database holds all the information for every relief valve in the refinery. A relief valve opens to release liquid or vapor in the instance of an emergency. If the database has the wrong information this could cost MAP thousands of dollars. The actual Berwanger company wanted a large lump sum to make the changes, so having me enter the data saved MAP a lot of money. Since I was one of the only people who knew how to work the system, other engineers began coming to me for help. This project utilized my math and logic skills, and I had to pay close attention to detail.

My second major project involved helping with turnaround. Turnaround lasted from January-March and required lots of knowledge that I learned in class. I had a chance to climb through the Lube Vacuum Tower measuring trays and weir (a dam or dike) heights. This column is only open every five years and it was a great learning experience. I loved the fact that I finally had a visual picture of what I learned in Separations class. Measuring the trays and weirs is important because if they are not exactly correct the whole distillation process is compromised. I also inspected the column and watched man-ways being closed. In addition, I counted and watched the loading of catalyst. Catalyst is very expensive, so MAP needs to know that the contractors are not loosing any while loading it into the columns. I also watched a heater burnout and borescoped vessel lines. These projects did not consume loads of time, but they definitely had immense significance. I received a real life look at chemical engineering and learned much more than I could have in a classroom.

My third major project at MAP was to develop a way to increase the steam supply to the No. 3 Crude tower. The tower needed 50# of steam to operate efficiently and was only receiving 23#. I developed a design to tie into a 150# steam header and have a let down station to 50# steam. My project directly related to the future installation of a coker, so I had to size our current steam pot to see if it would meet the needs of the new stripping steam rate. I discovered that the pot was too small and would have to be replaced when they installed the new coker. I then needed to size the steam lines so they would be able to reuse them for the new coker. Next, I needed to justify installing these new lines and let down station. I ran a HYSYS simulation of the current stripping steam rate and the design rate and discovered that the steam limited the Crude Tower. When you run the model at the design rate the distillation was better and we received more diesel. However, the steam cost money as well. Unfortunately, we discovered that the cost of steam would outway the profit. This project was very educational because I learned how to size vessels, size pipelines, run simulations, and size control valves. I also learned how to justify making changes in a process and how economics plays the biggest role in MAP.

During my second term at MPC, I was placed in the energy department. I was excited to return to MPC since the first co-op was very educational. My main project this semester was the fuel gas accounting program. When I arrived at MPC the accounting group, environmental group, and tech services were all reporting fuel gas numbers from different reports, as well as, different reports within each department. This causes many problems since the numbers were not the same. My job was to take over the fuel gas monitor and get everyone reporting from the same system. A fuel gas monitor is an extremely large spreadsheet with a refinery wide fuel gas material and energy balance. This balance includes: inputs, outputs, meter corrections, daily and monthly reporting information, and much more. I first had to make sure all the information in the monitor was correct. To check this information I cross examined the environmental heater duty calculations with the monitor heater duties. While doing this I discovered many unit errors and calculation errors. I also discovered the current system is using a base specific gravity of .8 for petrochemicals, which is very high. This discovery led to a huge change in the current system. While working with the monitor, I was also in charge of adding pilot gas duty to certain heaters. This is important because these small flows add up and could affect the balance. Furthermore, I worked with headquarters in Findley, OH and the accounting group to effectively switch over to the monitor as our reporting system. This eliminated many daily and monthly reports for a lot of people at Marathon. Also, now everyone is reporting from the same database with the same numbers. This project was a high profile item during my co-op tour and I received a lot of attention from the

Besides major projects I had many minor projects and daily responsibilities. My daily responsibilities included running the performance monitor and heater report. My weekly responsibilities included running a weekly heater report. Also, I had monthly responsibilities which included; monthly loss report, BOC Nitrogen report, steam leak survey and report, and Solomon EII report. In addition to these responsibilities there were many opportunities to pick up small projects. These include; bore scoping heater tubes, pitch heater burnout, cooling tower assessment, a ljungstrom performance test, and inspecting new KDS towers. I also received the news that one of my minor projects from the first term was put into the refinery. Minor projects are a great chance to pick up additional knowledge on specific units and equipment used in the refinery. It is also a chance to get some overtime for some extra money.

I was surprised to learn this time that I like the math and logic applications needed to solve problems more than design processes. Also my time management skills were greatly enhanced by having additional daily, weekly, and monthly responsibilities, which I did not have last semester. I felt that a lot more pressure and importance was involved during this term because my project was such a high priority. My confidence as an engineer has definitely increased.