Uchenna Izundu
International Editor
LONDON, Apr. 17 -- Fouling problems in refineries worldwide are causing the loss of about 7 million bbl/year of throughput capacity, a senior IHS executive said at an IHS energy symposium in London. The problem will worsen as refineries prepare to process more heavy crude, warned Simon Pugh, head of processing engineering technology at IHS.
Fouling is the build up of oil deposits on tubes in heat exchangers. Refiners spend $4.5 billion worldwide to clean up refineries, resulting in shutdowns and serious health and safety issues because of the need to safely dispose of toxic material from the tubes. Security of oil supplies also is threatened when refineries are offline.
Heat exchangers are usually overdesigned to ensure spare capacity. Pugh told OGJ that the development of smaller heat exchangers is showing promise. "However, you don't have to throw away the old ones: you can revamp those and reduce the number of tubes in them. Companies need to look at radical revamps and relatively simple things to address the problem."
Refineries suffering fouling have reduced throughput and are inefficient because they waste more energy in converting oil into fuel products. Consequently there are increased carbon emissions. "Up to 10% of refinery's carbon footprint is from fouling in preheating trains," Pugh said, adding that oil needs an extra blast in the refinery's furnace prior to distillation because of fouling.
Pugh recommended that the oil industry shares resources to solve the problem with an emphasis on technology to design new types of heat exchangers, hydrotreaters, and FCC units.
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