PROCESS FLOW DESCRIPTION

The Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) is the first processing unit for petroleum refining. Its primary function is to distill the incoming crude oil into various fractions with different target boiling ranges, directly separating into individual hydrocarbon compounds or further processed in other refinery processing units to attain the desired compounds / chemicals. The process flow diagram of a CDU is shown in figure 1. The crude oil is pumped from storage tanks into a series of heat exchangers (cross exchanging heat with various distillate / product streams) that preheat the crude oil to approximately 120oC. The heated crude oil is then transferred to the electrostatic desalter where the crude oil emulsifies with water. This allows the salts in crude oil to dissolve in the water. The salty water droplet will then coalesce into brine phase that separates from the oil phase. This results removal of inorganic salts (the cause for downstream corrosion and equipment fouling.) The processed crude oil then undergoes further preheating to 280 oC (such heat exchanging is essential for the economics of the unit in terms of energy conservation / utilization) before being transferred to a furnace where it partially vaporizes and then fed to the Atmospheric Distillation Tower. The partially vaporized crude is transferred to the flash zone of the column, at a point known as the stripping section. At the bottom of the stripping section, steam is injected into the column to strip the atmospheric residue of any light hydrocarbon and to lower the partial pressure of the hydrocarbon vapours. This allows more hydrocarbons to boil and rise up the tower. As the hot vapours rise through the trays up the column, the lower boiling point material moves towards the top of the tower. The atmospheric tower unit is operated at a few psi above atmospheric pressure to attain the desired reaction. Temperature of the column is kept within 400oC to prevent thermal crack of crude oil. In the overhead condenser, the vapours are condensed and part of the distillate is returned to the column as reflux. Further reflux is done by several pump-around streams

around the column. Other boiling range streams are condensed at various levels from the tower as side draw products. The side draw products are sent to side strippers to control their initial boiling point & the removal of lighter hydrocarbons. The strippers contain several trays and the stripping is done using steam at the bottom of the stripper. The vapours produced from the top of the side stripper are routed back via pipe into the column. Products from the atmospheric distillation unit are naphtha, kerosene, gas oils, and atmospheric residuum, distinguished by their true boiling point (TBP) cut-off ranges. Product Light Naptha Heavy Naptha Kerosene Light Gas Oil Heavy Gas Oil TBP Range (oC) 16oC - 105oC 82oC - 190oC 160oC - 280oC 210oC - 340oC 320oC - 450oC

Pump-around cooling units are setup to achieve a number of tasks. First, the cold liquid condenses more of the rising vapour thus providing more reflux to compensate for the withdrawal of products from the column. Secondly, it removes the heat from the column at higher temperatures. This is in addition to the heat removal from the condenser that takes place at relatively lower temperatures, thus improving the thermal efficiency of the column. Lastly, pump-around streams reduce the vapour flow rate throughout the column.