A comprehensive energy, water and carbon footprint analysis of petroleum fuel production in Iran: an allocation approach with uncertainty quantification

Oil refining is the second major CO₂ emission and water consumption (WC) stage in the life cycle of a petroleum fuel. However, despite having high greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions and suffering from water scarcity, Iran has barely documented energy, water, and CO₂ footprints for the production of petroleum fuels. Therefore, this study tried to cover this gap using an energy, water and GHGs allocation approach at the process unit level. Stochastic modeling was used to quantify the uncertainty of the results. The results indicated that diesel oil production consumed the highest amounts of energy (32.2%) and water (38.3%), and emitted the highest CO₂eq (36.0%). However, jet fuel showed the highest energy consumption (EC) intensity (6.6–7.5 GJ/m³), WC intensity (0.770–0.883 m³/m³), and CO₂eq emission intensity (522.4 ± 41.2 kg/m³). Thus, Merox process would be a better approach to provide jet fuel than hydrocracking that is currently used for this purpose. Upgrading the refinery’s configuration, which is the future plan of the refinery, will increase energy/water consumption and CO₂eq emission needing to be alleviated. Therefore, methods to optimize EC and WC in the refinery and various mitigation measures were discussed. The findings can be used to improve resources and environmental sustainability in the refining industry. They can also be applied in estimating the well to wheel life cycle assessment of the petroleum fuels.