Vacuum distillation unit

Where is naphthenic acid corrosion found Naphthenic acid corrosion occurs primarily in crude and vacuum distillation units, and less frequently in thermal and catalytic cracking operations. It usually occurs in furnace coils, transfer lines, vacuum columns and their overhead condensers, sidestream coolers, and pumps. 

The atmospheric reduced crude is the feedstock for the vacuum distillation unit. To prevent thermal decomposition (cracking) of the higher boiling point hydrocarbons in the crude oil, the pressure in the vacuum distillation fractionation column is reduced to about one-twentieth of an atmosphere absolute (one atmosphere pressure is 14.7 psia or 760 mm Fig). This effectively reduces the boiling points of the hydrocarbons several hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The components boiling below about 1050°F (565°C) are vaporized and removed as vacuum gas... 

STEAM CONDENSERS, evaporators a VACUUM DISTILLATION UNITS FOR CHEMICAL AND REFINERY PRODUCTS, ETC. 

Figure 3-1. Flow diagram of atmospheric and vacuum distillation units (1,3) heat exchangers (2) desalter, (3,4) heater (5) distillation column, (6) overhead condenser, (7-10) pump around streams, (11) vacuum distillation heater (12) vacuum tower.

By approaching the refinery design from a crude oil perspective, the advantage of preseparation by stepwise condensation after HTFT synthesis was reduced. The refinery design included primary separation steps typically found in crude oil refineries, namely, an atmospheric distillation unit (ADU) that is followed by a vacuum distillation unit (VDU). Despite the design intent, the operation of these units, out of necessity, had to be different. The reboiler temperature of the ADU was... 

The Fe-HTFT syncrude is fractionated in an atmospheric distillation unit to produce mainly naphtha and distillate, with a small amount of residue that is used as fuel oil (not shown in Figure 18.7). No vacuum distillation unit has been included in the design, since it would be superfluous with the limited residue production. The natural gas liquids are fractionated separately. 

Atmospheric and vacuum distillation units (Figures 4.3 and 4.4) are closed processes, and exposures are expected to be minimal. Both atmospheric distillation units and vacuum distillation units produce refinery fuel gas streams containing a mixture of light hydrocarbons, hydrogen sulfide, and ammonia. These streams are processed through gas treatment and sulfur recovery units to recover fuel gas and sulfur. Sulfur recovery creates emissions of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, sulfur oxides, and nitrogen oxides. 

A third waste source is very stable oil emulsions formed in the barometric condensers used to create the reduced pressures in the vacuum distillation units. However, when barometric condensers are replaced with surface condensers, oil vapors do not come into contact with water and consequently emulsions do not develop. 

During the past several years such stills have been largely replaced by tube or pipe stills because of their lower initial cost, greater throughput, and economy of operation. A common type of operation utilizes a two-stage atmospheric and vacuum distillation unit (13). This type of operation has an important advantage—the asphaltic residue remains at the extreme temperature for only a fraction of a minute in the pipe stills as contrasted to several hours in shell-type stills. 

Product distribution focuses on middle distillates (Table 9-15 Figure 9-24) with the process focused as a resid processing unit and inserted into a refinery just downstream from the vacuum distillation unit. 

Well over 50 large-scale EO model-based RTO applications have been deployed for petroleum refining processes. These model applications have been deployed in petroleum refineries Liporace et al., 2009 Camolesi et al., 2008 Mudt et al., 1995, both on separation units (crude atmospheric and vacuum distillation units) and on reactor units (including fluidized catalytic crackers (FCC), gasoline reformers, and hydrocrackers). 

While originally designed for cracking the overhead stream from vacuum distillation units, known as vacuum gas oil (4), most FCC units currently operate with some higher boiling vacuum distillation bottoms (Resid) in the feed. Table 5.1 illustrates the difficult challenges faced by refiners, process licensors and FCC catalysts producers the resid feeds are heavier (lower API gravity), contain many more metals like Ni and V as well as more polyaromatic hydrocarbons prone to form coke on the catalysts (Conradson Carbon Residue, or CCR). 

The atmospheric residuum is then fed to the vacuum distillation unit at the pressure of 10 mmHg where light vacuum gas oil, heavy vacuum gas oil, and vacuum residue are the products (Fig. 13.4). 

Atmospheric residue oil (Residue), containing compounds that boil above about 340°C (650°F). This is normally sent to a vacuum distillation unit to recover more light products, but parts of it may be blended into high sulfur fuels such as heating oil or bunker fuel (marine fuel). 

The process specifications on raw material speed through furnaces coils imposed the use of two or four parallel passes, e.g. the fumaees from the atmospherie distillation unit, vacuum distillation unit, catalytic reforming unit, coker unit, catalytic cracking unit. The conventional control structure of radiant section for a typical tubular furnace from the atmospheric distillation unit (output capacity 3.5 Mt/year) is presented in figure 1 [1]. Because the conventional temperature control system only controls one outlet temperature or in the best case the temperature of the mixing point, in current operations there are several situations [1, 2, 3] ... 

The current oil sands bitumen upgrading processes for the production of synthetic crude oil (Table 4) begin with diluted bitumen being processed through the diluent recovery units. The diluent recovery units are atmospheric distillation units that serve three purposes 1) distill off diluent naphtha and return it to the froth treatment process 2) distill off light gas oil and send it directly to a light gas oil hydrotreater and 3) produce hot atmospheric topped bitumen as feedstock for vacuum distillation unit and downstream bitumen conversion processes. 

The vacuum distillation unit cuts deeper into the atmospheric topped bitumen. It distills off the remaining light gas oil and heavy gas oil that are sent directly to hydrotreaters. The remaining vacuum topped bitumen can be blended with atmospheric topped bitumen and then sent to bitumen conversion units. 

Some of this feedstock was fractionated on a vacuum distillation unit at IFP into four other narrower cuts, centred on an increasing number of carbon atoms from C24 to C27/C28. These cuts cannot be used to accurately determine the reaction kinetics of a given linear paraffin, but may reveal possible mixture effects or steric hindrance. 

In both rectification methods, a bottom product is produced that will be separated into fractions in the vacuum distillation unit. 

ADU = Atmospheric distillation unit LOU = Lube oil unit HOT = Hydrotreating VDU = Vacuum distillation unit lieu = Hydrocracker unit VBU = Visbreaker unit FCC = Fluid catalytic cracking H1)S= Hydrode-sulfiirization ... 

Figure 6.5 Modern refinery vacuum distillation unit. One of the product streams is the feed to the plant prodticiny lubricating oils... 

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