Publication Date:
2015-11-21
Description:
Condensate oil is a kind of light crude oil with API gravity higher than 50 degrees. The increasing production of condensate oil due to shale gas/natural gas booming has economically motivate refiners to add this valuable and abundant crude source into their feedstock. Many refineries, however, were originally built to process heavier crudes, whose design must be retrofitted to enable the processing of the changed feedstock. In this paper, the conceptual retrofit design of crude distillation units for processing condensate oil has been studied. Four retrofit designs are proposed and simulated including facilities of preflash column, atmospheric distillation unit, and vacuum distillation unit. All retrofit designs are comprehensively evaluated by steady-state modeling for feasibility check, energy consumption analysis for operating cost evaluation, and retrofit cost evaluation. With the help of Aspen Plus, Aspen Energy Analyzer, and Aspen Capital Cost Estimator, the developed methodology provides a quantitative technology support to identify the optimal retrofit design. A comparison of the results shows that the retrofit design with preflash columns in sequence potentially could be the most economical case.
Print ISSN:
0930-7516
Electronic ISSN:
1521-4125
Topics:
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Process Engineering, Biotechnology, Nutrition Technology
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