Retrofitting heavy oil processes

Refiners, faced with the need to process the bottom end of the heavy high sulfur crude oil barrel in today's uncertain economic environment, are reluctant to commit large amounts of money to expensive upgrading processes. In order to conserve scarce capital while improving operating margins, additional valuable products can be produced by retrofits such as conversion of an idle crude unit to visbreaking, delayed coking or deasphalting service, or conversion of hydrodesulfurizers to mild hydrocracking.