Marathon

Currently Marathon Petroleum Company (MPC) has a Permit to Install application (APP-2023-0146) under review to reduce some emission limits and to increase their crude oil throughput to the refinery’s capacity.  The proposed modification, identified as the Detroit Permitting Project, is designed to meet fuel production demand and to lower emission limits at the refinery.  This application was submitted to EGLE on 5/31/2023.  This application intends to optimize the Detroit refinery by allowing existing equipment to operate at their physical constraints.  

 Marathon seeks the removal of product throughput/tank storage limits from the refinery’s air permit to allow the refinery to operate at the daily capacity. Presently MPC production maximum is 140,000 Barrels Per Day of refined gas. No physical changes will be made to existing equipment, and no new equipment will be installed as part of this project other than the emission reduction initiatives shown below. MPC intends to accept limits that restrict pollutant emissions to levels significantly lower than currently allowed. 

 Specifically, the Marathon application is requesting three types of changes to the existing ROP permit, including: 1) changes to the amount of allowed crude oil throughput; 2) equipment upgrades and removals; and 3) and some pollutant decreases (listed below).  While Marathon is classified as a major stationary source under the federal Clean Air Act, the project will be classified as a minor modification and constitutes a change in the method of operation. 

Marathon is committing to the following as emission reduction initiatives: 

Marathon is committing to the following as emission reduction initiatives

1. Replacing process heaters with two new, state-of-the-art lower NOx emitting heaters.

2. Removing the Crude Flare from service by re-routing streams that are normally routed to the Crude Flare to the Coker Flare System. Note that the Coker Flare is equipped with a gas recovery system designed to limit flaring and lower emissions. The Crude Flare does not have a gas recovery system.

3. Installing a geodesic dome designed to lower volatile organic compound, hazardous air pollutant, and toxic air contaminant emissions on an existing finished gasoline storage tank.

4. Expanding the refinery’s leak detection and repair program to include the monitoring of an additional 3,000 components in the refinery.

In general, Marathons seeks to increase production (which is limited by their current ROP) while decreasing emissions.  Marathon proposes to voluntarily decrease their emissions of:

-2.5% NOx, -28.2% SO2, -11.4% CO, -.1% PM, 0.4%PM10, and -0.4% PM2.5, -14.3% VOCs, -0.4% H2S, -0.6% Total Reduced Sulfur (TRS), -0.4% Sulfuric Acid Mist             (SAM).