Distillation Energy Savings

The crude oil distillation unit sits among the refinery’s largest consumers of fuel and steam, which is exactly where the biggest savings hide without any change to the basic design. Distillation energy savings come from recovering the heat already available and from the careful control of firing and steam, rather than from a rebuild of the tower itself.

The Preheat Train

Crude should arrive at the fired heater already hot, having passed through a bank of exchangers that recover warmth from the hot product and pump-around flows. The more heat those exchangers recover, the less fuel the furnace has to burn. Watching the outlet temperatures, catching the exchanger whose heat load has slipped, and cleaning a fouled bundle before it seizes keep that heat moving through the train.

Fine-Tuning the Fired Heater

The furnace must deliver the required outlet temperature to the lowest fuel charge, so operators watch the outlet figure, the stack temperature and the excess oxygen in the flue. Too much air means burning fuel to heat air that flushes down the stack; too little risks incomplete combustion. It is a matter of holding the combustion carefully, not of simply closing the air.

Stripping Steam and Pump-Around

Stripping steam improves the column separation, but more is not better, since the excess drives a gas load and a downstream condensation requirement without any product return. Setting the steam to the composition and the separation demand stops that waste, while a well-matched pump-around returns more recovered heat into the preheat side.

Fouling Is the Quiet Surge

Fouling is the slow rise in energy over time, deposits on the heat-transfer face cool the crude entering the furnace and push fuel usage up week by week. Monitoring the fouling and cleaning to a schedule rather than on failure holds the preheat performance firmer. Klean Industries reads the whole train as one system and rebalances each part to drive the total utility demand down.

Learn More:

• Feasibility Studies for Waste-to-Value Projects
• Turn-Key EPC Delivery
• Plant Design & Engineering
• Facility Efficiency Upgrades
• Resource Recovery Projects

Spend Less Energy for the Same Barrel

The savings sit in the heat and steam the unit is already losing, most of it recoverable without a rebuild.

Klean Industries audits the preheat, the firing and the steam network to close the heat loss you are already paying for.

Considering a distillation energy savings project?

Contact Klean Industries about distillation energy savings » GO.