Crude Oil Distillation with Superheated Water Steam: Parametrical Sensitivity and Optimization

Abstract

Stability of crude oil distillation units was analyzed with mathematical models developed using Aspen Hysys. Parametrical sensitivities of light fractions yields, heat duties and steam load of column trays to perturbations of superheated steam flow rate were estimated. Objective function based on the light products yields and energy consumption for distillation was formed. The maxima of the objective function were calculated depending on operational parameters and flow rate of water steam

A Visual Measurement of Water Content of Crude Oil Based on Image Grayscale Accumulated Value Difference

“…Artificial factors have negative impacts on the measuring results and sampling process of crude oil is random. It has good accuracy when water content is less than 1% [14]. The measurement accuracy of shortwave absorption method is about ±3% and the measurement range for water content ranges from 0% to 100% [9].…”

“…The traditional distillation, centrifuge, electric dehydration, as well as the Karl-Fischer titration belong to the offline measurement methods [13,14,15,16,17]. The main principle of distillation is to separate water from petroleum in crude oil samples by a certain chemical substance.…”

Risk level Assessment of the Desalter and Preflash Column of a Nigerian Crude Distillation Unit

“…The use of certain process schemes or materials in production in order to maximize profit may result in operability problems and increase accident risks in the plant. For example, steam stripping is very effective in the vapourisation of more products in refineries [9] but due to cost of steam, some refiners have employed the use of water steam which is less expensive [10] [11] but with its associated hazards and operational problems.…”