(31e) Industrial Experience in Handling Cleaning of Crude Refinery Preheat Trains

Industrial
Experience in Handling Cleaning of Crude Refinery Preheat Trains

^1,2Ishiyama E.M., ¹Pugh S.J. and ²Wilson D.I.

¹IHS
ESDU, Houndsditch, London EC3A 7BX, UK

²Department
of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge, New Museums
Site, Cambridge CB2 3RA, UK

Abstract

Oil refineries are a major part of the national economy: in the UK
alone, there are nine major refineries, processing over 1.8 million barrels of
crude oil per day (Watson and Vandervell, 2006), consuming energy at the rate
of gigawatts (~ 7.9 GW: Marsh-Patrick, 2006). Heat exchangers (HEXs) play a
major role on refineries in saving energy. Distillation is the main consumer of
energy on a refinery, and networks of HEXs are connected together in a preheat
train to reduce the duty on furnaces. These units all suffer from fouling. Based
on
the world crude oil consumption of ~ 88 MM bbl per day (in 2009 ? 2010), around
36 MM tonnes per year of extra CO₂ is estimated to be emitted
due to fouling (IHS ESDU, 2011). Handling fouling is
a major challenge, and to-date, total elimination of fouling has not been
achieved. Hence, cleaning of refinery exchangers is considered a practical
solution. Since the original work done by Georgiadia and Papageorgiou (2000)
and Smaïli et al. (2001),
optimizing scheduling in a practical perspective has taken broader attention (e.g.
Ishiyama et al., 2010). In this paper
we discuss practical industrial concerns on scheduling cleaning in crude
refinery exchangers and demonstrate a novel heat exchanger network simulation
tool, smartPM, used to mitigate fouling in a techno-economic perspective.

Georgiadis M.C. and Papageorgiou L.G. (2000). Optimal energy and
cleaning management in heat exchanger networks under fouling, Trans IChemE, 78, 168-179.

IHS ESDU Energy, Emissions, and
Efficiency: How to address heat exchanger fouling to reduce energy and
maintenance costs while improving plant performance, Penn Energy Webcast,
31^st March, 2011

Ishiyama
E.M., Paterson W.R., Wilson D.I., Heins, A.V. and Spinelli L. (2010). Scheduling
cleaning in a crude oil preheat train subject to fouling: incorporating
desalter control, Applied Thermal
Engineering, 30(13), 1852-1862.

Marsh-Patrick, A. (2006). EU emissions trading scheme
phase II: review of new entrants' benchmarks ? refineries. Entec UK Limited Final report. 3-4.

Smaïli, F and Vassiliadis, VS and Wilson, DI (2001) Mitigation
of Fouling in Refinery Heat Exchanger Networks by Optimal Management of
Cleaning. Energy & Fuels,
15 (5). pp. 1028-1056. ISSN 0887-0624

Watson, M. and Vandervell, N. (2006). Meeting our energy
needs: The future of UK oil refining. UKPIA
Final report, 13-24.