crude oil treatment

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Oil and gas are precious resources that even the most cursory review of the past history will reveal the great lengths to which nations can be driven to secure supplies.   Extracting and processing oil and gas demand high levels of efficiency. 

When Oil is extracted from the reservoir unfortunately it is laden with other impurities that must be separated before the oil can be deemed "oil refinery ready" for further processing into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, etc.  Such impurities can include water (produced water), sand and dissolved salts. Often the gas produced with crude oil is processed at site to serve as facility fuel or transported for sale.  

In the separation of oil and water by gravity settling, five tools can be deployed to enhance the process: 

• Chemicals
• Heat
• Processing Time  
• Electrostatic Fields  
• Mechanical Coalescing Media  

Chemicals and time are the most expensive. Chemicals are consumed rapidly leading to high operating cost. Increasing process time demands larger vessels and greater space leading to higher capital expenditures. Heat is somewhat costly as it requires fuel that has resale value and creates an environmental cost. Mechanical Coalescing is relatively inexpensive and can be very effective in many process environments.  The major concern with mechanical coalescing is fouling of coalescing media.  

Electrostatic Fields can be economical, save space, reduce requirements for heat and chemical, and result in maximum processing effectiveness. 

You can rely on 4MProcess to design processes and products that optimize your operations

Unfortunately, salt is a common byproduct of crude production and has to be removed before shipping and/or refining. 

In the pipeline 5 PTB (pounds per thousand barrels) with 0.2% water crude is corrosive. Chlorides in the refinery produce corrosion and catalyst loss. 

Because of the different levels of desalting required for field and refinery applications, equipment for the two applications can be considerably different. 4M Process offer desalter designs than can operate optimally in both applications. 

4M Process has technology expertise to upgrade existing vessels. The advantage of debottlenecking an existing process vessel, to increase capacity and improve performance, is evident considering that the vessels can be returned to service in days rather than months. 

Retrofits of existing separators can double the capacity of existing separators at the same time as raising separation efficiencies and halving operational chemical costs.