Crude Oil Processing
Crude Oil Processing
Identifying process facilities bottlenecks
As one of the main objectives of crude oil processing facilities is to remove as much produced water as possible to achieve a sales quality crude oil product, there are many applications throughout the processing stages that may benefit from monitoring of water inside of – or coming out of – any particular process module.
Although the efficiency of the main (first stage) 3-phase separator is the most critical for the overall process facilties capacity and throughput, there may be other bottlenecks or "bad performers" that reduces overall processing capacity to less than the facilities were originally designed for, such as:
•Two-phase separators – monitoring gas separation and amount of water going to proces
•Free Water Knockout (FWKO) drums/vessels after two-phase separators
•Second and third stage three-phase separators
•Heater treaters
•Mechanical and electrostatic coalescers
•Centrifuge type dehydrators
•Desalting units
•Crude oil custody transfer quality monitoring
