This is where I work Crown Central Petroleum. The refinery was one of the first to begin business on the Houston Ship Channel when the first facilities were erected in 1917.
The existing refinery in no way resembles the plant that began operation in 1917, as the refinery which is in operation today was built between the years 1969 and 1979. In 1996, the final phase of a modern centralized control room with plant-wide distributed controls was completed.
The ship channel location offers the advantages of being accessible to tankers, pipelines, and barges for receipt and shipment of feedstocks and products. Major downstream units consist of a 52,000 BPD fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) unit, a 12,000 BPD delayed coking unit, two alkylation units with a combined capacity of 12,000 BPD of alkylate production, and a 26,000 BPD continuous regeneration reformer. A complete petroleum coke calcining plant is also located at the site, but this unit has not been in operation during the last several years because economics of coke calcining have not been attractive.