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(2013) Question 66: What strategies should be considered to adjust for phosphorous in crude oil to protect downstream catalyst and processing units?

Extensive work was done with Western Canadian refineries in the late 2000s to investigate and solve this problem, including adjusting desalter pH to extract phosphorous in the desalter brine, adding a phosphorous removal chemistry, changing the trays in the crude tower to reduce fouling susceptibility, solvent-washing the deposit to avoid long cleanouts and shutdowns, and adjusting process temperatures.
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(2013) Question 67: When heat input is limited at the vacuum heater, what are the issues with bypassing crude tower over-flash around this heater?

For this answer, I am going to define crude tower over-flash as liquid collected on a collector tray above the flash zone at the atmospheric crude column. This may be either a total collector tray or some form of active tray. This liquid contains a mixture of entrainment from the flash zone and distillate from the wash section. The normal disposition is to send the liquid inside the tower down to the stripping section.
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(2013) Question 68: For those refiners seeing an increase in vacuum overhead chloride concentration at constant desalted crude salt content, what are the consequences and how can they be controlled?

First, verify the chlorides found in the hot well water. Could the chlorides be from leaks from the vacuum system condenser cooling water? A hardness test will quickly identify water system leaks. Essentially, getting a high chloride concentration in the vacuum overhead at a constant salt content in the desalted crude implies either a change in the chloride type or in the operating conditions leading to more chloride hydrolysis.
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(2013) Question 69: What are some of the advantages and challenges in processing FCC slurry in a vacuum tower along with conventional atmospheric residue streams?

If you feed FCC slurry to the vacuum unit, the major benefit is recovery of diesel range material. High temperature limits in the bottom of the heavy cycle oil slurry fractionation system limit diesel recovery from slurry. Typical limits in this section in the FCC are 720°F, or 382°C; above that, coking starts to be a major issue.
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(2013) Question 70: What are the key areas to target when contemplating crude unit modifications to enable effective tight oil processing? In addition to these modifications, what other problem areas become evident once the actual processing begins?

We run tight oil in six of our seven plants, and it is mixed in the basket of the other 10 to 20 crudes normally processed. Tight oils are not the predominant crude in most places, so we have not needed many modifications. In two instances, we did have tray fouling from drilling mud; so, we installed low fouling trays.
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(2013) Question 72: What are potential causes of damage to the top section of coker main trays? What mechanical and process considerations are used in designing the top section trays for more reliable operation?

Damages to the top section of the coker trays could be due to process-related reasons or mechanical or operational issues. One process-related reason is salt deposition. Usually, the salt is ammonium chloride. It is water-soluble, corrosive, and rapidly deposits at the right conditions, leading to severe loss of tray capacity and efficiency.
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(2013) Question 47: What evaluations are required for hydrocracking units to increase conversion due to processing heavier feedstocks?

Pilot plant studies should be done to evaluate catalyst performance with new proposed feeds. If you are planning to make revisions to your unit, you certainly want to consider catalytic changes, perhaps more selective to diesel or gasoline. Your operating cycle could possibly decrease or increase with conversion, depending on which way you are tending to go.
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