Crude Oil Fouling

With production from unconventional rigs continuing to escalate and refineries grappling with the challenges of shale and heavier oil feedstocks, petroleum engineers and refinery managers must ensure that equipment used with today's crude oil is protected from fouling deposits Crude Oil Fouling addresses this overarching challenge for the petroleum community with clear explanations on what causes fouling, current models and new approaches to evaluate and study the formation of deposits, and how today's models could be applied from lab experiment to onsite field usability for not just the refinery, but for the rig, platform, or pipeline. Crude Oil Fouling is a must-have reference for every petroleum engineer's library that gives the basic framework needed to analyze, model, and integrate the best fouling strategies and operations for crude oil systems.
- Defines the most critical variables and events that cause fouling
- Explains the consequences of fouling and its impact on operations, safety, and economics
- Provides the technical models available to better predict and eliminate the potential for fouling in any crude system

List of Contributors Preface ixNomenclature 1. Introduction 1.1 Crude Distillation Units in Oil Refineries 1.2 Impact of Fouling on Crude Distillation Units 1.3 Concluding Remarks 2. Basic Science of the Fouling Process 2.1 Fouling Mechanisms 2.2 Routes to Crude Oil Fouling Formation2.3 Events in Crude Oil Fouling 2.4 Variables Affecting Fouling 2.5 Conclusions 3. Experimental Generation of Fouling Deposits3.1 Small Scale, Accelerated Conditions: Microbomb Fouling Tests3.2 Batch System: Stirred Cell at the University of Bath 3.3 Large-Scale Experiments in Flow Systems 4. Deposit Characterization and Measurements 4.1 Analysis of Field Fouling Deposits from Crude Heat Exchangers4.2 Chemical Structure and Molecular Weight Characterization 4.3 Chemical Imaging of Deposited Foulants and Asphaltenes 4.4 Fluid Dynamic Gauging: Thickness and Strength Measurements 5. Modeling of Fouling from Molecular to Plant Scale 5.1 Review of Heat Exchanger Design Methodologies and Mathematical Models of Fouling 5.2 Thermodynamic and Molecular Modeling 5.3 Fundamental Transport Modeling 5.4 Industrial Scale High-Fidelity Modeling 6. Concluding Remarks Appendix 1 References Index