Total Refinery Protection

Gulf Coast Refinery, USA

Problem

Crude oil received by barge and pipeline is highly contaminated with Black Powder contamination. It enters the crude unit and causes (1) increased energy use to heat the crude feedstock, (2) lower product recovery efficiency, (3) trays to fill up, plug off and collapse, (4) more frequent and intensive turnarounds (TARs), which take longer to complete, and (5) contamination to move further into refinery process equipment.

Solution

Initially deploy BPS Magnetic Separator systems on all major pumps downstream of the atmospheric distillation column to remove contamination and lower energy use, prevent unscheduled downtime and facility upsets, extend the TAR cycle and improve product quality.

Results

The crude unit and overall facility is running much more efficiently with minimal downtime with BPS Magnetic Separators in place. As of June, 2019, there are BPS Magnetic Separators on the desalter process water, on the pumps identified in the table below and the refiner is looking at additional deployments on pumps and in the crude feedstock.

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Pump 108 Kerosene

Crude oil in the refinery feedstock, loaded with Black
Powder contamination.

Pump 107 Diesel Fuel

Contamination collected from finished distillate product: diesel fuel and kerosene, after 6 weeks of operation. The Magnetic Separator systems cleaned the product to the standard that it did not require clayfilter color removal.