Upstream Oil Cross Exchanger Experience 1

[natev]

I work for a small oil company, we are in the process of designing a new upstream oil plant, just taking the water/oil/gas and separating the streams, with the oil being further conditioned for sales and the gas/water being further conditioned for injection. We are discussing the merits of a crude oil cross exchanger, the shell side of the exchanger would be the oil line coming off of the inlet separator, the tube side would be the sales oil line probably right before the shipping pumps. In theory I think this is a good idea, it will add heat to the crude coming off of the inlet separator to assist with separation, and will cool the sales oil to assist with TVP management.

My fear is that the shell side fluids are still minimally processed and we would have trouble with fouling, has anyone had experience with this they are willing to share?

Thanks in advance.

 

[georgeverghese]

Heat recovery is usually a good idea, but you've got to set aside adequate funds for this heat exchanger bank to address (a) spare inline capacity while any one HX is offline for cleaning (b) materials of construction should be good for corrosion incurred from the fluids and also from any acid cleaning operations (c) HX configuration should be suitable for cleaning the tubes and the shellside also. Often, project management baulk at the cost of a well designed HX bank, and go for cheaper materials etc, passing on no end of misery to Operations staff further down the track. There have been many accidents with fatalities in the past relating to corrosion/ fouling / production bottlenecks/ high frequency of cleaning operations on HX heat recovery banks.
Agreed, looks like the separator exit fluids should be on the tubeside to enable cleaning. Add a generous tube side fouling coeff to increase run time for each unit. If you've got water or steam injection for EOR, it is very likely you'll get sour fluids in the future, so that needs to be taken into account also for materials of contruction at this bank. I'd keep this HX bank at a respectable distance away from other processing kit, given the manning at this area and the nature of the maintenance activities. Add double block and bleed / spec blind isolation for each unit in this bank.

 

[EdStainless]

You might look at the crude coolers used by the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
These units have the ability to backflush, and they also have u-bend tube bundles made of Sea-Cure superferritic stainless steel tubing.
Handling Cl laden crude from storage can be aggressive, along with fouling and MIC.

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P.E. Metallurgy, Plymouth Tube