Q&A

The preferred method of identifying the risk of hydrogen induced cracking is to measure the permeation or flux of hydrogen on the outside surface of the equipment and correlate this to the corrosion rate on the inside of the pipe.

ABIGAIL SLATER (HollyFrontier)
Salting typically occurs in the reactor effluent exchangers (shell and tube and fin fans), recycle and net gas compressors, and product stabilizer overhead system (top trays, overhead condenser, etc.). Common monitoring practices on exchangers and fin fans can be

DAVINDER MITTAL (HPCL Mittal Energy)
Chlorides have been a long standing issue in catalytic reformer operation. Until a few years ago, the focus on preventing operational problems from the chloride compounds in the catalytic reformer product stream was to remove HCl.  More recently, a growing

BILL KOSTKA (AXENS NORTH AMERICA)
Metal-catalyzed coke (MCC) formation typically occurs on 3d valence transition metals such as iron and nickel.  Under CCR-like conditions of low hydrogen partial pressure (less than about 620 kpa), high temperature (more than about 480 °C) and low or stagnant flow

BILL KOSTKA (AXENS NORTH AMERICA)
Liquid-phase Cl treaters are typically used in three locations for reforming units.

Treating the unstabilzed reformate stream provides several advantages.  The stream is heated upstream of the stabilizer column which ensures that any ammonium chloride is

ABIGAIL SLATER (HollyFrontier)
The most impactful parameter affecting alky acid consumption is feed quality. Reducing feed contamination will greatly reduce acid consumption. There are also operational changes that can be made to reduce acid consumption, but the biggest impact will be feed

STEVE WILLIAMS (Marathon Petroleum Corporation)

•    Movement of intermediate streams from refinery to refinery has been a common practice, including movement of heavy oils.  This activity is expected to increase following implementation of the IMO 2020 rules reducing the sulfur content in maritime

XIOMARA PRICE (SUEZ Water Technologies & Solutions)
Crude blending is still largely based on the economics of the blends and less on the processing constraints that may exist.  Real time analytic and predictive tools are available to the industry to help quickly determine the blends relative

STEVE WILLIAMS (Marathon Petroleum Corporation)
•    Mud wash is utilized to help keep the bottoms of a desalter vessel relative free of solids build up.
•    Utilizes a distribution header with nozzles located near the bottom of the desalter to create a liquid disturbance at the bottom to preclude

Ammonium chloride and amine hydrochloride salts can form in the top section of the Atmospheric and Vacuum Towers, and the overhead exchangers of the tower. The formation of these salts is a function of partial pressures which dictated by the concentrations of ammonia, amines, chlorides in addition to operating conditions such as overhead temperature, pressure, steam flow rate and hydrocarbon flow rate.