Oil in Steam boilers Burners

[SmartEngineer]

Does anyone of you have an experience with using crude oil for burners in steam boilers?
If so, what type of treatment for sulpher or others are conidered.

Thank you in advance

SmartEngineer

 

[elguero]

I don't have direct experience with crude oil in this application, but I know enough about crude oil to point to some things to consider.

1. What is the scale of the operation? What you do will depend on the scale to some extent.
2. In what country will you be doing this? Degree of sulfur treatment is a political question.
3. What amount of sulfur do you have? 100 ppm is different from .75%.
4. Some pretreat of crude will be necessary. Even a lot of pretreat might be economically justified.
5. If your crude contains a fair amount of gas, you might want to burn the gas instead of the liquid.


Good luck.

 

[orenda1168]

SmartEngineer:

In addition to the comments by Elguero, be aware of the sodium, vanadium and nickle content, as these metals in high enough concentration can produce significant slagging of superheat tubes and subsequent tube corrosion, efficiency loss and SO3 generation that leads to corrosion in heat recovery equipment. Also consider the physical parameters of the crude, such as flash point, light ends composition, gravity and the like as these influence the preheat requirements and burner design.

I would question the viability of crude burning versus resid given the current price of crude.

Orenda