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Optimize crude preheat train to balance efficiency and

operability
06.01.2013 | Zhang, J. , Foster Wheeler, Reading, UK
Keywords:
Critical attention must be paid when designing the crude distillation unit (CDU) preheat train. Many pitfalls can
easily lead to unnecessary expenditures or unsatisfactory operations. Key design criteria include high energy
efficiency, operational flexibility and reliability. Some designers may elect to replicate a previously proven
design, without full consideration of the feedstocks characteristics. Others may focus on implementing designs
with computer-aided tools to generate the heat exchanger network (HEN) without sufficient attention to the
effects of heat integration on the whole plant operation. A practical and systematic design approach can
integrate process design, control, simulation and pinch analysis, as outlined in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. Crude preheat train design flowchart.
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Basis of (developed) design
A major energy demand within refineries is the required heat input for the crude feedstock upstream of the CD
column to obtain the desired flash and distillation yields. Conversely, heat removal is needed to provide the
internal refluxes and cooling of CDU products. The main design objective of the crude preheat train is
minimizing total energy consumption by maximizing heat recovery. However, there is more to designing a
crude preheat train than the HEN alone.
When starting the design of the preheat train, the basic parameters, such as feedstock, product yields and
product specifications are determined but other operational philosophies must be developed for the engineering
process. Generally, the approach for a revamp design will be different from a new unit. The revamp project must
use many of the existing constraints as set by the present configuration and plant equipment.
Operational considerations. The refinerys operations team may have strong views on the preheat train
configuration, especially if it is a revamp. Redundancy for some heat exchanger services may be necessary to
allow exchanger cleaning to maximize CDU run length. Operators may also have strong views on CDU controls
and how the unit is started up and shut down.
A strategy should be developed to start up the CDU and vacuum distillation unit (VDU), and operational needs
should include:
Establishing hot and cold circulations to remove water and to achieve on-specification products in both
the CDU and VDU.
Heating the feeds and cooling products. This may require additional startup and shutdown lines and
involve alternate uses for equipment, especially for atmospheric and vacuum residue.
Alternate routings may require more severe operating conditions for some equipment and affect
mechanical design conditions.
If inter-unit heat integration will be considered, then the shutdown schedule of all units will have to be
compared and reconciled. The design strategy should include operating strategies so that processing operations
can continue in the event other process units are shut down. This may result in additional equipment.
Basis (further development) of design
The overall philosophy for the heat integration must be established. This could involve heat integration within
the unit or heat integration with other process units. Although most consideration is given to intra-unit heat
integration, inter-unit heat integration is equally important for total energy efficiency. Besides providing heat to
the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) fractionation and gas-recovery plants, heat integration with other refinery
units should also be considered. Excess heat from cokers and fluid catalytic crackers (FCCs) is used for steam
generation. These process units are high-level heat sources and can be considered for preheating the crude to
reduce the overall refinery fuel consumption. However, a careful analysis of the unit shutdown philosophy
should be evaluated. This could result in additional investment for equipment to support refinery operation
during unit shutdowns and process upsets.
The refiner will generally have a payback philosophy; it can be in terms of simple payback or internal rates of
return on incremental investment. For revamps, the extent of heat recovery may be limited to a predetermined
overall unit cost budget. The owner may have energy targets or expectations for the preheat train. This could be
expressed in terms of total energy targets for the unit, temperature approaches or target heater inlet
temperatures. Usually global (whole unit) targets are set, with local minimum temperatures preset for
individual exchangers, which may be close to any temperature pinch.
Initial simulation analysis
For a new design, the target product cutpoints, feed/product rates and specifications are set during the initial
simulation and generally are derived from a linear programming study (Fig. 2). The total heating and cooling
curves are generated from the initial simulation. These curves are used as a basis for a high-level heat
integration analysis.
Fig. 2. A typical CDU schematic.
At a high level, the total heating and cooling curves will show if there is an excess or a shortfall in available heat
from the process to meet the preheating requirements of the crude feedstock. Also, it can give an indication of
the scope for integration with other process units or facilities. The balance between heat availability and
demand depends on the crude feedstock. For lighter crudes, more heat is recovered at lower temperatures, and,
consequently, lower preheat temperatures are usually obtained, as shown in Fig. 3.
Fig. 3. Composite heating and cooling curves.
It is likely that a stand-alone CDU will have a shortfall in available heat from the hot streams within the unit. If
this is the case, energy (heat) input from other units to the CDU may be feasible, and steam may be the best
medium for reboiling the light-ends columns in the gas plant, as there will be no available heat from the CDU.
However, where the CDU is integrated with a VDU, excess heat may be available, which can be used for
reboiling light-ends columns, generating steam or supplying heat to other users.
The effects from the number of pumparounds (PAs) and draw temperatures on the heater inlet temperature
should be investigated to achieve an optimum design. The target global approach temperature is set at the initial
design stage. Fig. 4 shows the results of this analysis. This figure shows the optimum global temperature
approach for a particular network.
Fig. 4. Total cost targets for the CDU.
Startup and shutdown scenarios should be considered at an early stage, especially when there is heat integration
between units. For example, if the CDU and VDU are heat-integrated, then the VDU will receive hot feed
directly from the CDU. While this is good for heat integration, it does make starting up and shutting down the
unit more difficult, especially if the timing of these operations is not identical.
For a revamp, modeling the present operation and bench-marking the results against operating data are
necessary before simulating the new operations. Such evaluations are helpful in rating the existing heat
exchangers and determining if the required heat inputs and removals can be achieved by the present
configuration. If a reconfiguration is required, a review of the heating and cooling curves can provide an
overview of the heat-recovery possibilities and present cross-pinch heat exchange. However, the constraints
within the existing configuration may dominate setting new targets.
Hydraulic analysis
The pressure profile must be developed and managed in parallel with the heat integration. The preheat train will
often have multiple pumps and many heat exchangers in seriesthus, the operating pressure may approach the
600-lb flange rating limits in some areas. Addressing the pressure profile ensures that the design pressures
remain below key flange rating limits. This will give substantial capital cost savings, compared with a design
that exceeds the flange rating limits. The practical design approach establishes the pressure profile at an early
stage; the pressure profile is continually reviewed to ensure a good design.
The pressure profile starts at the crude-feed tank. The first decision is whether the crude is blended and
supplied from a crude-blending tank or blended inline downstream of the storage tanks. Inline blending is often
accomplished by using low-pressure (LP) blending pumps within the tank farm (some may be on recycle), and a
crude-charge pump boosts the pressure at the CDU unit. The crude-charge pump allows the tank to be drawn to
a lower level, because the net positive suction head (NPSH)
1
required for the LP pumps is less than that
required for higher-pressure crude-charge pumps. The discharge pressure of the blending pumps is more than
adequate to meet the NPSH requirements at the crude-charge pump suction. Using a crude-charge pump at the
CDU battery limit has the further advantage that operating the unit on total recirculation becomes
straightforward and simplifies startup. Fig. 5 is a typical CDU preheat train; it has three main sections:
Preheat before the desalter. The crude must be heated to remove bottom sediment and water by the
desalter. Often, the temperature is allowed to float within an operating range so that the crudes viscosity
permits good water removal, while ensuring the wet crude remains below its vapor pressure. For a revamp, it
may be necessary to control the temperature more precisely to stay within operating constraints. In some
designs, booster pumps are installed downstream of the desalters.
Flash drum/column. Following the desalter, further heat recovery takes place. A flash drum column may be
installed, especially for lighter crudes in which a high-preheat temperature is achieved causing high vapor
pressures.
Heater inlet. Finally, the crude is heated up to the heater inlet temperature.
Fig. 5. A typical preheat train schematic.
In evaluating design pressures, heat exchanger burst-tube scenarios may also need to be considered.
At the start of the design, a rough pressure profile should be developed for the preheat train. It is based on an
estimate of the number of exchanger services in series. This will often give a first indication that the
configuration may need to be changed to limit the pressure drop. The pressure profile should be updated as the
heat exchanger design progresses. For revamps, the design pressure constraints can influence where new
exchangers can be fitted into the design. For a new unit, the startup and shutdown requirements may influence
the decision on the location of any crude booster pumps.
It is usually preferable to set the pressure upstream of the control valve at the inlet to any
preflash/prefractionator; it should be above the bubble-point pressure. This will suppress vaporization, improve
control of the operation, reduce the risk of fouling by salt deposition, and avoid mechanical problems due to
slug flow. However, if the pressure balance is marginal and two-phase flow is expected due to variations in the
crude feedstock, the unit must be designed accordingly.
Two-phase issues
Operating within a two-phase flow regime can provide advantages in terms of better heat recovery and lower
operating pressure. Units have operated successfully in this manner without excessive fouling problems,
provided that the upstream desalting operation (double- or triple-stage desalting may be required) is operated
efficiently. If a unit is designed for two-phase operation, then it is vital to consider the whole range of crudes to
be processed by the CDU. Operation with less vaporization than the design basis will lead to lower fluid
velocities, poorer heat-transfer coefficients and lower performance.
The operating pressure of the preflash/prefractionator will affect the amount of light ends being flashed directly
to the crude column and the vaporization of crude from the heater, as well as the CDU performance. The
optimum pressure should be selected based on a parametric analysis of the effect of pressure on the crude
column overflash/distillation and the efficiency of the heat integration.
To ensure that the flowrate to the furnace is controllable, the operating pressure should be high enough so that
no vaporization occurs upstream of the control valves on the parallel furnace passes. For a new design, the
operating pressure should be set to provide a margin over the bubble-point pressure and consider:
Clean and fouled heat exchanger operation
Potential use of heat exchanger bypasses
Preflash vessel operating pressure flexibility
Maximum Reid vapor pressure (Rvp) of the design crude
Alternative crudes.
Also, low heater-flow trips only protect against low-pass flow and not the total loss of crude flow. With the loss
of crude pressure, vaporization upstream of the flow orifices will occur, and any flow trips will become
unreliable due to the higher vapor velocities.
Pinch analysis on the H design
Pinch analysis is a key design tool to achieve optimum energy efficiency. Modern software allows a HEN to be
generated automatically for defined heating and cooling streams. However, engineering judgment is critical to
ensure a practical and robust design. Designers should never rely solely on the automatically generated
solutions. The HEN generated by the software may represent the best energy efficiency, but it can often lead to a
design with high capital requirements and little flexibility. A practical design demands thorough analysis, and it
requires that the designers take charge to configure the HEN, using the software only as a support tool. In
addition, commercially available software may have limitations in the size/complexity of system it can
accommodate. For example, while a preheat train for a CDU may be manageable, an integrated CDU and VDU
may be too complex for the software to analyze. Key points to consider for a practical heat exchanger network
design are:
The total heat recovery system design should be optimized to achieve an economic target for energy
usage when compared to total capital expenditure (CAPE ) and should account for both the preheat
train and cooling equipment.
For inter-unit heat integration, there is a trade-off between the total plant energy efficiency and
operability. HEN design software often presents solutions with a large number of small heat exchangers
and in an arrangement that could be awkward to build and control. These designs should be rationalized
to obtain a good overall solution.
Where the achievement of the targeted cooling temperatures is critical (for example to ensure a safe
rundown of products to tankage), cooling utilitiessteam generation, cooling water or air cooling
should be used for final cooling. Often, the trim coolers are sized, based on the maximum rundown rates
from different crude or cutpoint operations or, for clean exchanger operations, when some exchanger
bypassing may be required to avoid temperature pinch-out.
On larger-scale CDUs, it is common to split the feed crude line into several parallel streams from section
to section. This ensures that heat exchangers remain within their mechanical size limits, while increasing
the level of heat integration and enhancing heat recovery. However, an increased number of splits can
lead to operational and control issues, especially during periods where the feed crude ratio is being
adjusted. There is always a trade-off between energy efficiency and operability. However, sophisticated
control systems can be configured to use ramping functions to help the operators optimize the splits and
smooth out the transitions during crude composition or cutpoint changes.
The crude preheat upstream of the desalter needs careful consideration to ensure that the temperature
remains within the desirable range1 0 C to 1 0 C. For revamps, it may be necessary to control the
desalter temperature more tightly to avoid constraints. In this situation, one solution is to split one of the
duties into two, with one part duty upstream of the desalter and the second part duty downstream. This
will allow adjustment of the desalter temperature without significant effects on the heat recovery.
Sayfa / 9 Optimize crude preheat train to balance efficiency and operability | Hydrocarbon Proce...
The HEN should be designed to allow the column fractionation performance to be controlled by varying
the circulating reflux and/or quench duties. This is achieved by varying the flowrate of the circulating
refluxes and/or providing a trim cooler in one or more PAs.
Temperature control by bypassing exchangers on the crude side is not recommended due to increased
fouling at low crude velocities.
In the event of excess heat availability, recovery of low-level heat from product rundown streams is
preferable to recovery from overhead streams, but this should be confirmed by a review of the composite
curves. Heat recovery from overhead streams can lead to dewpoint corrosion problems and potential
contamination problems in the event of tube leakage. If the exchangers are elevated, then significant
extra costs are incurred due to the need to mount the exchangers in a structure. In some instances,
running warm side products to the receiving units will provide better total heat integration. However,
warm rundown limits the heat that can be recovered from the rundown streams, and heat recovery from
overhead streams may need to be considered.
For fouling services, if long run lengths are required, then the exchangers should be placed in
parallel/series line-up to allow online isolation and cleaning. This is particularly an issue with crude and
residue streams. Strategies include providing isolation block valves and bypasses on both sides to allow
for cleaning and designing for increased flows through some exchangers while others are out of service.
Pressure drops will also increase with fouling. While control valves will operate with a considerable
pressure drop at start of run, there will be minimal pressure drop available at end of run.
As the HEN design progresses and the PAs are allocated against crude splits, it is necessary to re-evaluate the
PA rates. Ideally for a particular heat exchanger service, the mass rate, M, multiplied by the specific heat, Cp, (M
x C
p
) for either side should be similar in value. Thus, the heating and cooling curves will be approximately
parallel, and the heat exchanger area will be minimized. It is possible to optimize the PA rates and crude splits,
where there are parallel exchangers, to minimize the heat exchanger area by adjusting these rates.
Operational analysis
The single most important factor affecting the design of the preheat train is the volume of each product. This is
dependent on the crudes characteristics. The optimized HEN can be significantly different for light and heavy
crudes due to the differences in the heating and cooling curves. Some typical crude yield variations are shown in
Fig. .
Fig. . ome typical crude yield variations.
As the crude-to-product-price differential dominates refinery margins, refiners try to process less-expensive
(opportunity) crudes and/or to produce more higher-value products to improve profitability. Therefore, the
CDU feedstock may be expected to vary significantly during the refinerys lifetime. Many refiners try and cover
this variation by specifying multiple crudes and blends in the design basis. An alternate approach would be to
allow for higher vapor pressures, design temperature and pressures, and higher heater duties in the design to
provide more operational flexibility.
If the unit is designed for more than one crude, then different parts of the preheat train will be designed based
on different cases. The quickest option is to specify each individual piece of equipment for the controlling case
or design mode. This typically results in the colder end of the preheat train being designed for the lighter crudes
and the hotter end of the preheat train for the heavier crudes. The unit controls should be capable of
compensating for the resulting over-design, and the designer will gain an understanding of the performance by
converting the simulation into rating mode. In rating mode, the key equipment parameters such as heat
exchanger geometries or, more simply, heat transfer coefficient, U, times area, A,(U x A)values are input
into the simulation, and the uncontrolled process conditionsincluding temperatures, pressures and heat
exchanger dutiesare resultant from the specified equipment data.
Rating mode can be used to simulate the unit operation (including over-design) for the normal operating cases,
with the exchangers in a clean, or a moderately or heavily fouled state, or at turndown. Such simulations would
allow the controls to be tested for a range of scenarios, and may identify that over-performance in one area
results in poorer performance in another, due to temperature pinch-out. This may result in a need for additional
bypasses or an increase in some utility cooling duties. In some cases, the utility cooling design duties may be set
by the rating cases.
The other major use of rating simulations is to reduce the net over-design resulting from the overlay of several
design cases. This is done by trial and error, based on assessing the effects of the over-design from one case on
the other cases. An ideal scenario would be for the design area for each case to be approximately the same, and
with no additional area having to be added to the utility cooling design cases. This last option can be time-
consuming and costly at the design stage, but could give significant CAPE benefits. HP
CK O M T
The author acknowledges the assistance provided by her Foster Wheeler colleagues: Christopher M. ones,
Group Manager Process Technology; Bernard M. Hagger, Chief Engineer Refining; and Philip G. Marden,
Principal Consultant Process Engineer in the preparation of this article.
OT
1
The NPSH is the difference in meters (or feet) of fluid between the absolute pressure at the pump suction,
taking into account the tank level minus the pressure drop in the suction pipe and the vapor pressure of the
fluid.
The author
Jenny Zhang is a principal process engineer working as a member of the Process Technology Group within
Foster Wheelers Process Engineering Department in Reading, UK. Ms hang has over 0 years of experience,
specializing in process design, simulation, process RAM studies and energy optimization covering refining,
LNG, GTL and CCS projects. She holds an MPhil degree in chemical engineering from UMIST, Manchester, UK,
and a BSc degree in chemical engineering from East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai,
China.
ictor Tailer
0!.1!.2013
Excellent article. It may be necessary to calculate the payout to include gross overhead in the preheat train when
rundown products and PA s mai not be enough to reached a prehet train outlet temperature. Do you know who
is the licensor of HEN software and b) there are any other software to calculate the preheat train
I
0!.21.2013
The article summarizes properly the main variables that process design engineers should take into account
during design of a new preheating train for CDU. it should be done integration both, design and operational
experience. We execute something similar in a new design, evaluating the heat integration between CDU / VDU
and deep conversion unit. As the author recommends, we used the software only as a tool, while the HEN was
modified manually based on a trade-off between operational philosophies and energy efficiency. Further
evaluations were done based on startup, turndown, shutdown and emergency cases, then, the final HEN, with
the additional connections and over design for some specific services, used for alternative cases, were proposed.
OB TO B I
06.2!.2013
Great article. A simple system (Crude preheating) yet complex with many factors to consider. Honestly, I have
not consider the effects of start-up and shutdown activities in my previous design. Many thanks.

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COPYNG AND DSTRBUTNG ARE PROHBTED WTHOUT PERMSSON OF THE PUBLSHER

Optimize crude preheat train to balance efficiency and

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