(165d) Exploiting the Use of Compact Heat Exchangers on Preheating Trains

Recently, energy and oil prices have reached the highest level ever seen in oil industry. Crude oil distillation unit is among the biggest energy consumers in a refinery. In such scenario, revamping the distillation unit to process advantaged crudes in addition to higher heat recovery may lead to significant improvement on refinery margins. However, the processing of advantaged crudes demands special metallurgy, resulting in high investment at preheating train. Besides, a higher heat recovery will possibly demand an increase on plot area, which might be a constraint in meeting the energy targets.

Compact heat exchangers become an attractive alternative to the traditional shell and tube exchangers due to the topics discussed previously, especially when metallurgy costs and plot area are constraints. In contrast, compact heat exchangers are a quite innovative solution within oil industry and many refinery designers don't have enough information about the equipment performance, particularly regarding fouling issues.

A joint study between ALFA LAVAL and PETROBRAS, took place at Duque de Caxias Refinery, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A compabloc CP30 unit has been installed, in order to evaluate the performance of this equipment under industrial conditions. The chosen service was vacuum residue preheating crude before the desalter.

The present work is going to present some data from this test and discuss some aspects involved on the design of the preheating train using compact units, as well as other PETROBRAS experiences using compabloc.