Ultrasound applied to crude oil desulfurization

An innovative method for upgrading crude oils will find application across multiple industry sectors. Following field trials completed late in 2008, Houstonbased SulphCo, Inc. reported it has successfully used a 5,000 b/d mobile “Sonocracking” unit to duplicate on a commercial scale its proprietary process that applies high-energy, high-frequency sound waves, so-called ultrasonics, in conjunction with oxidation chemistry to improve the quality of crude oil and crude oil fractions. Dr. Florian Schattenmann, SulphCo chief technology officer, said use of high-powered ultrasound can significantly accelerate the sulfur compound oxidation needed to upgrade crude oils and petroleum products into sweeter (i.e., containing less sulfur) crudes and products (e.g., diesel), potentially eliminating or...

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Refinery Feedstocks

The basic raw material for refineries is petroleum or crude oil, even though in some areas synthetic crude oils from other sources (Gilsonite, tar sands, etc.) and natural gas liquids are included in the refinery feedstocks. The chemical compositions of crude oils are surprisingly uniform even though their physical characteristics vary widely. The elementary composition of crude oil usually falls within the following ranges. In the United States, crude oils are classified as paraffin base, naphthene base, asphalt base, or mixed base. There are some crude oils in the Far East which have up to 80% aromatic content, and these are known as aromatic-base...

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API Oil-Water Separator

An API oil-water separator is a device designed to separate gross amounts of oil and suspended solids from the wastewater effluents of petroleum refineries, petrochemical and chemical plants, natural gas processing plants and other industrial sources. The name is derived from the fact that such separators are designed according to standards published by the American Petroleum Institute (API). Description of the design and operation The API separator is a gravity separation device designed by using Stokes' Law to define the rise velocity of oil droplets based on their density and size. The design of the separator is based on the density difference...

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Capacity Loss due to Cubcooled Reflux Use

Sometimes feeds going to a distillation column are subcooled. One reason a feed may be subcooled is because during energy optimization of the plant the feed stream going to the column was identified as a source of heat that could be cross-exchanged with colder stream. Another reason is it may be advantageous to subcool the overhead product of a column at the condenser instead of using an additional product cooler. The biggest problem is that these factors are often not taken into account when sizing column internals. This may lead to a premature flooding, loss of column efficiency, and reduced capacity. Excessive sub-cooling of a reflux...

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