A joint research program plans a 3 year study of fouling that reduces production and raises costs at refineries.
Participants are Chevron Research & Technology Co., Richmond, Calif., Heat Transfer Research Inc. (HTRI), College Station, Tex., and the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago.
The $1.6 million project aims to find ways to reduce deposits that form on the walls of heat exchangers and other refinery units.
Studies estimate that fouling costs a typical 100,000 b/d refinery about $14 million/year in added energy and maintenance expenses by reducing the efficiency of units.
Sponsors pointed out that refineries are processing larger volumes of heavier crude oils and bottom of the barrel material that remains after producing higher grade fuel products. Such feedstocks contain varying amounts of fouling agents organic (carbon based) molecules, dissolved minerals, and suspended solids. As a result, it has been hard to find a single approach to reduce fouling.
The Chevron HTRI Argonne project will determine temperatures, pressures, and other conditions at which fouling starts. The goal is to develop advanced heat exchanger designs and ways to operate them that eliminate or reduce fouling.
WHO DOES WHAT
Study participants will share the work like this:
- Chevron will carry out field experiments to relate Argonne's and HTRI's findings to an operating refinery.
- HTRI will conduct laboratory experiments in a test loop it will build.
- Argonne will study chemical reactions that produce fouling and deposition of material on heat exchanger surfaces.
Chevron will provide support valued at $550,000 to the project. HTRI will provide $382,000, and DOE's Office of Fossil Energy will provide $670,000 through Argonne.
The joint project is being carried out under a cooperative research development agreement.
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