Desalting & Dehydration

Desalting also takes place during

Dehydration
• First step in the produced gas separation
process is to separate crude and gas
• If the salt content of the crude is greater than
10 lb/1000 bbl (expressed as NaCl), the crude
requires desalting to minimize fouling and
corrosion caused by salt deposition on heat
transfer surfaces and acids formed by
decomposition of chloride salts.
 Purpose of Dehydration

REMOVES NEGATIVE DOWNSTREAM EFFECT

• Salt • Fouling
• Solid metals • Scaling
• Water • Catalyst Poisoning
• Amines • Unit Upset
• Suspended
Particles
 Methods
• Gravity or Mechanical Method
• Electrochemical Method
• Ultra-sonic Method
• Chemical Method
• Filtering Hot Crude Using Diatomaceous Earth
 Types
• Chemical and Electrostatic separation:
 Washing crude oil with water
 Water phases are separated
 Adding chemicals to assist in breaking up emulsion
 Application of electrostatic field to collapse the droplets
1. Chemical separator:
 Water and chemical surfactant (demulsifiers)
 Heated
2. Electric separator:
 Under charge condition polar molecules get oriented and
get separated.
 Process
• The crude oil feedstock is heated to 65-180°C
to reduce viscosity and surface tension for
easier mixing and separation of the water.
• In all methods chemicals may be added.
• Ammonia is often used to reduce corrosion.
• Caustic or acid may be added to adjust the pH
of the water wash
 Design Calculation
• Maximum quantity of water requires for desalting
(Salt Specification)

• Cso = salt content of the oil, lbm/1,000 bbl

• Csw = concentration of salt in produced water, ppm
• γw = specific gravity of produced water
• fw = volume fraction of water in crude oil
 Mixing efficiency
• The fraction of wash water that actually mixes
with the produced water
• Bypasses the desalting stag
• Depending Parameters
 Mixing intensity and duration
 Diffusion transport
 Inter-drop-collision frequency
 Water recycle
• Collision frequency, between drops of
dispersed brine and dilution water is
proportional to the drop populations
• Factors affecting are
 Recycle ratio
 Temperature
 pH
 Dilution water
• To satisfy mass-balance requirements for diluting the
dispersed brine enough that the salt specification can be
met
• It must have low enough salt content to achieve the
required equilibrium
• Water must not contain
 Coke particles
 Suspended solids
 Iron sulfide
 Emulsified oil
 Analytical Methods
• Extraction
• Aqueous layer (Jar Test)
• Spectro-photometric
Single stage
Single stage Gravity Settler
Cross Section
Mechanism
Two-Stage
Hybrid
Working of Electrostatic Coalescer
• Distributor injects crude just below multiple
layers of electrostatic grids.
• Water droplets present in the crude are
exposed to the electrostatic field that
rearranges the (salt) ions within the droplets.
• Droplets will then attract each other and as a
result, they coalesce, grow in size, and then
fall out of the upward flowing crude.
 AC Current
• Coalescers are designed using alternating
current (AC), which is a proven and reliable
technology.
• Other types of power supply are DC, AC+DC
• Significant drawbacks are tendency for arcing
(short-circuiting) and electrical complexity. 
 References
• Warren, K.W. 1993. Reduction of Corrosion through Improvements in
Desalting. Paper presented at the Benelux Refinery Symposium,
Lanaken, Belgium, 2–3 December.
• ASTM D-96-88, Standard Test Methods for Water and Sediment in
Crude Oil by Centrifuge Method (Field Procedure). 1988. West
Conshohocken, Pennsylvania: ASTM.
• ASTM D-4007-02, Standard Test Methods for Water and Sediment in
Crude Oil by Centrifuge Method (Laboratory Procedure). 2002. West
Conshohocken, Pennsylvania: ASTM.
• ASTM D-3230-05, Test Method for Salts in Crude Oil (Electrometric
Method). 2005. West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania: ASTM.
• API RP-45, Recommended Practice for Analysis of Oilfield Waters, third
edition. 1998. Washington, DC: API.