Lemont Refinery is an

oil refinery An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial processes, industrial process Factory, plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refining, refined into products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, Bitumen, asphalt base, ...

Romeoville, Illinois Romeoville is a village in Will County, Illinois, United States. The village is located southwest of Chicago on the Gateway Wetlands, directly west of the Des Plaines River. Per the 2020 census, the population was 39,863. It is located in the s ...

owned and operated by

Citgo Petroleum Corporation Citgo Petroleum Corporation, or Citgo (stylized as CITGO), is a United States–based refiner, transporter and marketer of transportation fuels, lubricants, petrochemicals and other industrial products. Headquartered in the Energy Corridor area ...

. Originally constructed in the early 1920s, it was reconstructed between 1968 and 1970 by its then owner

Union Oil Union Oil Company of California, and its holding company Unocal Corporation, together known as Unocal was a major petroleum explorer and marketer in the late 19th century, through the 20th century, and into the early 21st century. It was headqu ...

and has a current crude processing capacity of 177,000 barrels per day. The refinery was the site of the

1984 Romeoville petroleum refinery disaster On July 23, 1984, an explosion and fire took place at a Union Oil Lemont Refinery in Romeoville, Illinois, outside Chicago, killing 17 people and causing major property damage. The explosive force propelled the upper portion of the vessel a di ...

in which 17 people were killed. The facility includes the following major units: one atmospheric distillation unit, one

vacuum distillation Vacuum distillation or distillation under reduced pressure is a type of distillation performed under reduced pressure, which allows the purification of compounds not readily distilled at ambient pressures or simply to save time or energy. This te ...

unit, one

fluid catalytic cracking Fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) is the conversion process used in petroleum refineries to convert the high-boiling point, high-molecular weight hydrocarbon fractions of petroleum (crude oils) into gasoline, alkene gases, and other petroleum produc ...

unit, two

catalytic reforming Catalytic reforming is a chemical process used to convert petroleum naphtha, naphthas from crude oil into liquid products called reformates, which are premium "blending stocks" for high-octane gasoline. The process converts low-octane linear hydr ...

units, one

alkylation unit An alkylation unit (alky) is one of the conversion processes used in petroleum refineries. It is used to convert isobutane and low-molecular-weight alkenes (primarily a mixture of propene and butene) into alkylate, a high octane gasoline compo ...

hydrodesulfurization Hydrodesulfurization (HDS), also called hydrotreatment or hydrotreating, is a catalytic chemical process widely used to desulfurization, remove sulfur (S) from natural gas and from oil refinery, refined petroleum products, such as gasoline, g ...

units, and two

coker unit A coker or coker unit is an oil refinery processing unit that converts the residual oil from the vacuum distillation column into low molecular weight hydrocarbon gases, naphtha, light and heavy gas oils, and petroleum coke. The process thermally ...

References

Energy infrastructure in Illinois Oil refineries in the United States {{Illinois-struct-stub