Reducing exchanger fouling

This article points out that fouling from hydrocarbon streams leads to enormous financial penalties in terms of additional energy consumption and debits in thruput. A typical 100,000 bpsd oil refinery might incur total fouling related expenses of around $10 million per annum. About half of this cost can be attributed to deposit formation in the network of heat exchangers used to preheat crude oil from storage conditions to around the 350/sup 0/C necessary for operating the crude distillation unit (CDU). An example preheat train is shown in Fig. 1. More than one category of fouling may be responsible for the overall deposition process. For example, the high inorganic contents of CDU preheat exchanger deposits suggest that crystallization, particulate, corrosion and hydrocarbon degradation mechanisms are all contributors. Inevitably, therefore, no single simple solution to the hydrocarbon fouling problem is available.