We are accustomed to handling marine bunker fueling requirements from small to large, with fast response, our good personal relations with the physical suppliers is a key strength to ensure optimal service. Apart from marine bunker fuels and lubricants, we can also supply water, handle slop removal, and offer agency service.

What is marine bunker fuel C Fuel Oil?
"marine bunker fuel C" fuel oil is a term which has been used for many years to designate the most thick and sticky of the residual fuels. When steamships were coal-fired,"marine bunker fuels" was the home for the bins used to hold the coal. As marine diesel engines became prevalent, the term was carried over to include the liquid fuel tanks. At one time, the lighter fuel oils marine bunker fuel A and marine bunker fuel B were also available.

What does it look like?
marine bunker fuel "C" fuel oil is a sticky, black liquid similar in appearance and smell to asphalt sealing compounds. At 10° C it has a consistency of liquid honey or corn syrup. At 0° C it barely flows.

Where does it come from?
"Residual" fuel was originally defined as whatever liquid was left behind in the petroleum distillation unit after the removal of more valuable products like kerosene, diesel and naphtha. However, this type of fuel is no longer commonly available. marine bunker fuel "C" oil is currently produced by blending the oil remaining after the refining process with lighter oil.

What is it used for and why?
In addition to being used in the majority of large marine diesel engines, marine bunker fuel oils are used in power generating stations, industrial boilers and furnaces, and pumping plants. marine bunker fuel oil is an inexpensive and readily available source of energy in many parts of the world.

How would marine bunker fuel C oil behave if it was spilled at sea?
Because it is less dense than water, fresh marine bunker fuel "C" fuel oil would float in water either at or below the surface. As the oil ages or "weathers", it becomes heavier, but it would still float under most conditions. If the oil comes into contact with sediment, sand or other shoreline materials, they may adhere together forming lumps or tar balls.

Is marine bunker fuel "C" oil toxic?
marine bunker fuel "C" fuel oil poses little threat to deep-water marine life because it does not disperse into the water column. The main threat to surface and shoreline organisms comes from the possibility of coating or smothering. Because it is a residual oil that contains few volatile organic compounds, marine bunker fuel "C" fuel oil is generally not toxic to plants or animals.

What oil sampling and analysis is involved with the Irving Whale?
Oil samples from the barge have been analysed at two Environment Canada laboratories to determine their physical and chemical properties. If oil spills during the recovery of the vessel, it will be compared with Irving Whale reference samples using various techniques to determine if the barge was the source of that oil.

Bunker fuel is not a waste product left over from the refining process of crude oil. Refineries produce very little waste. Virtually all of the crude that goes into the refinery comes out as a saleable product. So what is bunker fuel and how is it produced?

The source material for bunker fuel is the residue left over from the distilling stages of the refining process. This residue is processed further to generate valuable products, including material used to blend marine fuels.

Upon arrival at a refinery, crude oil is put into settling tanks to separate out the water and salt that all oil contains. Left untreated, the salt would cause severe corrosion problems in the refinery, and could poison expensive catalysts. Salt is separated out by water washing. The water percolates through the oil, dissolving the salt as it goes, and is drawn off at the bottom of the settling tanks.

The first stage of the refining process is distillation. The oil is heated to around 350°C, and fed into a tower where the heat differential between the top and the bottom of the tower ensures that hydrocarbon components with a lower boiling point accumulate towards the top, and those with a higher boiling point collect towards the bottom. The individual hydrocarbons are drawn off at various boiling points through pipes arranged along the column.

Light-end products drawn off towards the top include LPGs, naptha, and kerosene. Lower down, light and heavy gas oil fractions are drawn off, along with a residue, known as long residue. Once separated out, the higher-end hydrocarbon fractions and the residue follow different routes. The higher-end products are treated to remove or neutralize non-hydrocarbon components, such as sulphur. From there they move to the catalytic reforming stage, where the octane number of the straight-run gasoline fractions is increased using catalysts.

The long residue left over from the first distillation stage goes on to vacuum distillation towers. Vacuum distillation takes place under reduced pressure or in a vacuum at temperatures between 300°C and 400°C. This increases the effectiveness of the distillation process, and half of the residue fed into atmospheric distillation towers can be separated out into vacuum gas oil distillates. The remainder comes out as short residue, which contains the asphaltenes and trace metals found in crude.

The short residue is either used as a blending material with refinery distillates to produce fuel oil, including bunkers, or it moves on to the conversion stage, designed to increase the volumes of distillates even further using a process known as cracking.

There are three forms of cracking: thermal, catalytic and hydro. Thermal cracking is done by heating the short residue to temperatures in excess of 400°C, causing larger molecules to break up into smaller ones, which can be syphoned off as distillates. Often, distillate is left in the residue or reblended with the aim of reducing the viscosity of the residue. Such units are referred to as visbreakers. The residue produced by visbreakers can be used as a blending material for fuel oil.

Thermal cracking is cheap but the degree of conversion is small. Only 25% of the short residue is recovered as distillates, which are usually of poor quality. More effective are catalytic cracking units, often referred to as fluidized catalytic cracking units (FCCUs). Catalytic cracking can convert up to 75% of the feedstock into gasoline.

Sometimes catalytic elements escape from FCCUs into the residue they produce, typically aluminum, and are what the bunker trade refers to as catalytic fines. Aluminum is a contaminant, hence the specification of a maximum aluminum content in many bunker orders.

The most effective cracking process is hydro-cracking, which can convert up to 100% of the feedstock into distillates under very high pressure. Although effective and environmentally friendly, these units are expensive and require the input of hydrogen, which is costly.

While short residue from atmospheric distillation and visbreaker residue are used to blend fuel oils, including bunker fuel, on their own they are too heavy for fuel purposes. Short residue has the consistency of molasses. Visbreaker residue is only slightly more pleasant.

To produce fuel oil, lighter products need to be blended in. These are typically generated as a residue following the catalytic cracking (FCCU), known as light cycle oil and heavy cycle oil. Light cycle oil has the consistency of diesel fuel and paraffin. Heavy cycle oil has a consistency similar to golden syrup. When combined, these various refinery materials make fuel oil.

Bunker fuel is made from a succession of process residues. It is worth noting that refinery managers are guided by economic principles. If the price of bunkers compares favourably with that of higher end products, they will set the operation of their plants to produce more heavy fuel oils. Given the opposite circumstances, managers will squeeze more light-ends out of their crude. It is a case of maintaining optimum ratios to produce an optimum return on the crude input. It should be clear that bunker fuels are not a waste product. Bunkers should be considered as by-products, produced in tandem with a refinery's main hydrocarbon fractions.

There has been a trend in some parts of the world to feed distillate residues through to bitumen blowers, which produce bitumen for the manufacture of asphalt. This allows those refiners, not keen on handling heavy fuel products, to turn their residues into less environmentally sensitive products.

The introduction of cokers into the refining process, particularly in the US, is evidence of this. Cokers are an extreme form of bitumen blower. In essence, the feed material is treated as harshly as possible to produce elemental carbon known as petroleum coke, which is used as fuel in blast furnaces to manufacture steel.

By the end of the refining process, roughly 95% of the volume of the crude feedstock will have been converted into marketable products. The remaining 5% is used as fuel to run various refinery processes. Oil refining is one of the most efficient processes ever developed.

Office locations:  

300 Hempstead Turnpike, Suite 207
West Hempstead,
New York 11552 USA
516-486-2020
800-682-3835

50 Park Avenue
Rutherford, New Jersey 07070
201-935-3350
800-682-3835

700 South Newmarket Square
Suite 320
Newport News, VA 23612
800-682-3835

Port Locations:

Portland, Maine
In the port of Portland, Maine, Plaza maintains one central location. Dockside fueling or deliveries by truck are available.

Boston, Massachusetts
In the port of Boston, Massachusetts, Plaza maintains one location in Chelsea on the Chelsea Creek. Dockside fueling or deliveries by truck or barge are available. Lube oil is available upon request.

New York Harbor, New York
In New York Harbor, Plaza maintains three locations; one in Port Newark, New Jersey, one in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and one in Carteret, New Jersey. Dockside fueling or deliveries by truck or barge are available. Lube oil is available upon request.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
In the port of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Plaza maintains two locations. One is located in Gloucester City, New Jersey near the Walt Whitman Bridge and the other is located on the Schuylkill River one mile from the Navy Yard. Dockside fueling or deliveries by truck or barge are available. Lube oil is available upon request.

Baltimore, Maryland
In the port of Baltimore, Maryland, Plaza maintains two locations. Both are located in Curtis Bay, one near Wagners's Point, and the other four miles south. Dockside fueling or deliveries by truck are available. Lube oil is available upon request.

Norfolk, Virgina
In Virginia, Plaza maintains three locations; two on the southern branch near the Jordan Bridge and one location in Newport News. Dockside fueling or deliveries by truck or barge are available. Lube oil is available upon request.