Processing recovery

As decommissioning approaches and all well intervention opportunities to increase productivity have been exploited, enhanced recovery processes may be considered as a means of recovering a proportion of the remaining hydrocarbons. However, such techniques are generally very sensitive to the oil price, and whilst some are common in onshore developments they can rarely be justified offshore. 

The carboxylated units, ionized, decrease adsorption on subterranean substrates (23), ia proportion to the number of units, an important parameter ia petroleum recovery processes. In waste treatment processes cationic acrylamide comonomer units are often used (31) to iacrease adsorption and thereby flocculation of soHds ia wastewater (see Acrylamide POLYMERS Flocculating agents). The favorable and characteristics of acrylamide facilitate the... 

The first criterion was associated with improved secondary and tertiary petroleum recovery processes. This is the justification for the patent appHcations issued to the Dow (50) and Exxon (51) corporations. The additional costs of production and the increased adsorption of such modified water-soluble polymers are detrimental to the commercial appHcation of such polymers and even the academic studies in this area have decreased in recent years. 

Lubricants, Fuels, and Petroleum. The adipate and azelate diesters of through alcohols, as weU as those of tridecyl alcohol, are used as synthetic lubricants, hydrauHc fluids, and brake fluids. Phosphate esters are utilized as industrial and aviation functional fluids and to a smaH extent as additives in other lubricants. A number of alcohols, particularly the Cg materials, are employed to produce zinc dialkyldithiophosphates as lubricant antiwear additives. A smaH amount is used to make viscosity index improvers for lubricating oils. 2-Ethylhexyl nitrate [24247-96-7] serves as a cetane improver for diesel fuels and hexanol is used as an additive to fuel oil or other fuels (57). Various enhanced oil recovery processes utilize formulations containing hexanol or heptanol to displace oil from underground reservoirs (58) the alcohols and derivatives are also used as defoamers in oil production. 

The lime—soda process is practiced mainly in isolated areas in some process operations, in the Kraft recovery process, and in the production of alurnina. It is not as efficient a route as electrolytic production. 

Most coal-tar chemicals are recovered from coproduct coke ovens. Since the primary product of the ovens is metallurgical coke, production of coal chemicals from this source is highly dependent on the level of activity in the steel industry. In past years most large coke producers operated thein own coproduct recovery processes. Because of the decline in the domestic steel industry, the recent trend is for independent refiners to coUect cmde coal tars and light oils from several producers and then separate the marketable products. 

The monomer recovery process may vary ia commercial practice. A less desirable sequence is to filter or centrifuge the slurry to recover the polymer and then pass the filtrate through a conventional distillation tower to recover the unreacted monomer. The need for monomer recovery may be minimized by usiag two-stage filtration with filtrate recycle after the first stage. Nonvolatile monomers, such as sodium styrene sulfonate, can be partially recovered ia this manner. This often makes process control more difficult because some reaction by-products can affect the rate of polymerization and often the composition may vary. When recycle is used it is often done to control discharges iato the environment rather than to reduce monomer losses. 

Acetylene Recovery Process. A process to recover coproduct acetylene developed by Linde AG (Fig. 11), and reduced to practice in 11 commercial plants, comprises three sections acetylene absorption, ethylene stripper, and acetylene stripper. 

Most by-product acetylene from ethylene production is hydrogenated to ethylene in the course of separation and purification of ethylene. In this process, however, acetylene can be recovered economically by solvent absorption instead of hydrogenation. Commercial recovery processes based on acetone, dimetbylform amide, or /V-metby1pyrro1idinone have a long history of successfiil operation. The difficulty in using this relatively low cost acetylene is that each 450, 000 t/yr world-scale ethylene plant only produces from 7000 9000 t/yr of acetylene. This is a small volume for an economically scaled derivatives unit. 

Some of the economic hurdles and process cost centers of this conventional carbohydrate fermentation process, schematically shown in Eigure 1, are in the complex separation steps which are needed to recover and purify the product from the cmde fermentation broths. Eurthermore, approximately a ton of gypsum, CaSO, by-product is produced and needs to be disposed of for every ton of lactic acid produced by the conventional fermentation and recovery process (30). These factors have made large-scale production by this conventional route economically and ecologically unattractive. 

Brines. About 65% of the iodine consumed in the world comes from brines processed in Japan, the United States, and the former Soviet Union (see Chemicals frombrine). The predorninant production process for iodine from brines is the blow-out process, which was first used in Japan. Iodine is present in brines as iodide, and its concentration varies from about 10 to 150 ppm. As shown in Figure 3, the recovery process can be divided into brine clean-up, iodide oxidation to iodine followed by air blowing out and recovery, and iodine finishing. 

Empty containers may be destroyed in an incinerator or decontaminated by washing with a dilute thiosulfate or sulfite solution. Bulk wastes should be treated by controlled iodine recovery processes. 

The lead-bearing components ate released from the case and other nordead-containing parts, followed by the smelting of the battery plates, and refinement to pure lead or specification alloys. The trend toward battery grid alloys having Httle or no antimony, increases the abiHty of a recovery process to produce soft lead (refined). As requited in the production of primary lead, each step in the secondary operations must meet the environmental standards for lead concentration in ait (see Air pollution Lead compounds, industrial toxicology). 

Silver readily forms alloys with lead. Lead is often used as a base metal solvent for silver recovery processes. The lead—silver system is a simple eutectic having the eutectic point at 2.5 wt % silver and 304°C. The soHd solubihty of silver in lead is 0.10 wt % at 304°C, dropping to less than 0.02 wt % at 20°C. 

Condensable Hquids also are recovered from high pressure gas reservoirs by retrograde condensation. In this process, the high pressure fluid from the reservoir produces a Hquid phase on isothermal expansion. As the pressure decreases isotherm ally the quantity of the Hquid phase increases to a maximum and then decreases to disappearance. In the production of natural gas Hquids from these high pressure wells, the well fluids are expanded to produce the optimum amount of Hquid. The Hquid phase then is separated from the gas for further processing. The gas phase is used as a raw material for one of the other recovery processes, as fuel, or is recompressed and returned to the formation. 

A large portion of the can be released from the reprocessing faciHty as CO2. Thus a recovery process has been developed using an alkaline absorbent column (37). 

The focus of more recent work has been the use of relatively low concentrations of additives in other oil recovery processes. Of particular interest is the use of surfactants (qv) as CO2 (4) and steam mobiUty control agents (foam). Combinations of older EOR processes such as surfactant-enhanced alkaline flooding and alkaline—surfactant—polymer flooding show promise of improved cost effectiveness. 

Some alkylphenols in commercial production have low vapor pressures and/or low thermal decomposition temperatures. Eor these products, the economics of distillation are poor and other recovery processes are used. Crystallisation from a solvent is the most common nondistUlation method for the purification of these alkylphenols. 

Modijications to the Recope Cycle. The recovery system is a principal capital cost in a kraft mill. Consequently, any recovery process that is less expensive to build can improve pulping economics. There have been numerous attempts to improve the kraft recovery process. Two examples are the direct alkaline recovery scheme (DARS) and the autocausticizing scheme using sodium borates (37). Both schemes eliminate the lime loop of the conventional kraft mill. As of 1996, neither is commercially used. 

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