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Advances in salt point management practices: Mitigating overhead corrosion with big data

Publication ,  Conference
Cross, CW; Zhaoyang, W; Patel, K
Published in: Fuels and Petrochemicals Division 2017 - Core Programming Area at the AIChE Annual Meeting
January 1, 2017

In the world of overhead corrosion, it has long been recognized colloquially that ninety percent of metal loss occurs during ten percent of the time in operation. In many types of fractionating tower overheads, a confluence of fluctuating dynamical factors lead to the formation of amine hydrochloride salts and ongoing associated corrosion. Because of the constantly changing tendency to form corrosive salts in an operating unit, it has remained difficult using traditional approaches to systematically identify the proverbial ten percent of time where damage-causing episodes occur so that effective intervention and mitigation are possible. The challenges above have caused the fundamental principles of overhead corrosion mitigation to remain largely unchanged in the last decades. While advances in metallurgy, inhibitors, injection practices, and monitoring techniques have occurred, overhead corrosion measurement and predictive practices have not. The result is that crude unit overhead systems continue to experience corrosion that leads to unexpected failures, fouling, outages, all contributing significantly to lost profit opportunities. Salt point management practices continue to rely largely on series of unconnected salt point calculations over time using sparse data sets. Here we will present a new computational framework that allows continuous and quantitative sensitivity computations for amine hydrochloride salt formation in an operating crude unit. This capability then leads to the rapid identification of seemingly random corrosion events and their precise causes. During an emerging corrosion event, the onset can be rapidly flagged and alerted while the driving forces of salt formation and their sensitivities are quantitatively revealed. The demonstrated method takes near real-time data from operating crude units and uses it to compute how changing factors, such as crude diet, processing objectives, operations, control schema, physical constraints, set points, and randomly varying amine and chloride levels, cause corrosion events. The practical objective of the methodology is to drive timely, precise, and proactive mitigation options in a granular and systematic fashion across a wide variety of event types. Real-world examples taken from operating refineries will be used to demonstrate the technique.

Duke Scholars

Published In

Fuels and Petrochemicals Division 2017 - Core Programming Area at the AIChE Annual Meeting

ISBN

9781510858039

Publication Date

January 1, 2017

Volume

2017-October

Start / End Page

87 / 97
 

Citation

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Cross, C. W., Zhaoyang, W., & Patel, K. (2017). Advances in salt point management practices: Mitigating overhead corrosion with big data. In Fuels and Petrochemicals Division 2017 - Core Programming Area at the AIChE Annual Meeting (Vol. 2017-October, pp. 87–97).
Cross, C. W., W. Zhaoyang, and K. Patel. “Advances in salt point management practices: Mitigating overhead corrosion with big data.” In Fuels and Petrochemicals Division 2017 - Core Programming Area at the AIChE Annual Meeting, 2017-October:87–97, 2017.
Cross CW, Zhaoyang W, Patel K. Advances in salt point management practices: Mitigating overhead corrosion with big data. In: Fuels and Petrochemicals Division 2017 - Core Programming Area at the AIChE Annual Meeting. 2017. p. 87–97.
Cross, C. W., et al. “Advances in salt point management practices: Mitigating overhead corrosion with big data.” Fuels and Petrochemicals Division 2017 - Core Programming Area at the AIChE Annual Meeting, vol. 2017-October, 2017, pp. 87–97.
Cross CW, Zhaoyang W, Patel K. Advances in salt point management practices: Mitigating overhead corrosion with big data. Fuels and Petrochemicals Division 2017 - Core Programming Area at the AIChE Annual Meeting. 2017. p. 87–97.

Published In

Fuels and Petrochemicals Division 2017 - Core Programming Area at the AIChE Annual Meeting

ISBN

9781510858039

Publication Date

January 1, 2017

Volume

2017-October

Start / End Page

87 / 97