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Improved Unit Economics, Crude Blending and Throughput Management Using a Novel High Temperature Corrosion Prediction Framework

Sulfur and acidic impurities in crude oils pose serious hot oil corrosion problems in crude distillation units (CDU) and associated vacuum distillation units (VDU), especially with the increase in processing of lowquality, opportunity crudes. In the range of 200-400˚C, reactive sulfur compounds cause sulfidation corrosion of ferritic carbon and chrome steels in CDU, VDU, and front ends of downstream units operating at hot oil temperatures. Over the same temperature range, naturally occurring carboxylic acids in crudes can be so aggressive that higher alloy, austenitic stainless steels containing >2.5% Mo are required for processing high acid oils.

Product Number: MECC23-20054-SG
Author: Sridhar Srinivasan, Gerrit Buchheim
Publication Date: 2023
$20.00
$20.00
$20.00

Margin improvement in crude processing can benefit from new knowledge-based, engineering solutions, designed to offer a framework to harness the immense power of plant and process data to achieve superior process efficiencies, productivity and reliability. The need to work with opportunity crudes in refinery unit operations, a business imperative of crude blending and crude slate optimization, has meant that operators face substantial risk of corrosion damage in the crude distillation unit (CDU), vacuum distillation unit (VDU), associated equipment and side stream piping. Using Total Acid Number (TAN) and Sulfur content in crudes as proxies for Naphthenic Acid and Sulfidic corrosion in refinery operations has often led to conservative, cost-inefficient decision making in terms of crude selection, crude processing, and unit metallurgy specifications. Alongside, the refining industry has consistently sought, for reasons of improved economics and ROI, to move in the direction of processing heavier, high Sulfur, high acid opportunity crudes. Such a directional shift has been a consequence of depleting reserves and declining sweet crudes. Processing of low-cost opportunity crudes as an integral part of crude-slate planning has become a business necessity to improve refining margin.


The CorrExpert®-Crude application enables realization of the business need to work with opportunity crudes without risking corrosion damage to CDU / VDU equipment. Leveraging crude assay data and information available through cloud-based process historian, the framework can also facilitate enforcement of appropriate Integrity Operating Windows (IOW) through utilization of corrosion rate as a dynamic IOW parameter alongside other key operating variables such as TAN, Sulfur, Fluid Turbulence and Temperature. The system’s ability to seamlessly collaborate with other platforms including crude blending and supply chain planning applications such as Haverly®1 and PIMS®2 has important implications for creation of a digitalized solution integrating crude assay with automated predictive analytics en route to achieving crude processing flexibility, improved reliability, and enhanced profitability.

Margin improvement in crude processing can benefit from new knowledge-based, engineering solutions, designed to offer a framework to harness the immense power of plant and process data to achieve superior process efficiencies, productivity and reliability. The need to work with opportunity crudes in refinery unit operations, a business imperative of crude blending and crude slate optimization, has meant that operators face substantial risk of corrosion damage in the crude distillation unit (CDU), vacuum distillation unit (VDU), associated equipment and side stream piping. Using Total Acid Number (TAN) and Sulfur content in crudes as proxies for Naphthenic Acid and Sulfidic corrosion in refinery operations has often led to conservative, cost-inefficient decision making in terms of crude selection, crude processing, and unit metallurgy specifications. Alongside, the refining industry has consistently sought, for reasons of improved economics and ROI, to move in the direction of processing heavier, high Sulfur, high acid opportunity crudes. Such a directional shift has been a consequence of depleting reserves and declining sweet crudes. Processing of low-cost opportunity crudes as an integral part of crude-slate planning has become a business necessity to improve refining margin.


The CorrExpert®-Crude application enables realization of the business need to work with opportunity crudes without risking corrosion damage to CDU / VDU equipment. Leveraging crude assay data and information available through cloud-based process historian, the framework can also facilitate enforcement of appropriate Integrity Operating Windows (IOW) through utilization of corrosion rate as a dynamic IOW parameter alongside other key operating variables such as TAN, Sulfur, Fluid Turbulence and Temperature. The system’s ability to seamlessly collaborate with other platforms including crude blending and supply chain planning applications such as Haverly®1 and PIMS®2 has important implications for creation of a digitalized solution integrating crude assay with automated predictive analytics en route to achieving crude processing flexibility, improved reliability, and enhanced profitability.

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A Review of Naphthenic Acid Corrosion and Sulfidic Corrosion in Crude Oil Refining Applications

Product Number: 51319-13443-SG
Author: Yuhchae Yoon
Publication Date: 2019
$20.00

Corrosion problems related to crude refining became a dominant concern as crude oil refining expanded to serve global energy demands with economic costs and benefits in the petroleum industry and more so with the availability of ‘opportunity crudes’. Reducing oil production costs have continuously forced refineries to look for so-called “opportunity” or “alternate” crudes which are usually lower quality higher corrosivity crude oils with higher levels of naphthenic acids and sulfur compounds. Processing of these high acid high sulfur crudes has engendered significant corrosion concerns in hot oil distillation units and associated piping systems.Mitigating ‘opportunity crude’ corrosivity involves several strategies including improvement of the refining process of blending crudes injection of inhibitors de-acidification utilization of better materials with higher corrosion resistance control of flow velocity and associated wall shear stress produced by the flow media and finally optimization of in-service inspection and monitoring in oil refineries. This paper will review based on the experience of the authors in developing extensive naphthenic acid corrosivity data from a comprehensive Joint Industry Program (JIP) the influence of crude oil chemistry on naphthenic acid corrosion contributions of reactive sulfur chemistry to protectiveness and FeS scale formation and the ability to resist naphthenic acid corrosion utilizing beneficial sulfur speciation as well as acid molecular weight molecular structure molecular boiling point as well as operational parameters of temperature shear stress and alloy metallurgy.Key words: Naphthenic Acid Corrosion Sulfidic Corrosion Corrosion Prediction Opportunity crude processing