Seeking help in selecting heat exchangers for high-viscosity crude oil
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This post was last edited by wangjh0814 on 2018-12-5 08:44. Hello, everyone in this forum! I’m reaching out for help today: For heavy oil with a viscosity of 300–500 mPa·s, when cooled from 87°C to 50°C at a pressure of 7.5 MPa, can it be cooled directly using air as the cooling medium, or is it necessary to generate cold water first for cooling? What type of heat exchanger is more suitable? To avoid dead zones and prevent blockages, the pressure drop must not be too high (0.3 MPa). Note: Initially, air-cooled cooling water was chosen for heat exchange between water and oil, but the user disagreed, fearing uneven heat transfer that could lead to pipe blockages and dead zones. If direct air cooling is used, how can we avoid the problem of tube blockage caused by dead zones resulting from flow deviation?
I understand the purpose of cooling down is to pack for export? If that’s the case, then why bother about the cooling method?
The problem is that the cooling heat exchanger is not well designed, so the temperature does not reach the required level.
Hello, original poster! The crude oil cooling or heating units we supply for the Chunxiao Project, the North China Oil Field, as well as projects in Saudi Arabia and South Africa, all use spiral plate heat exchangers, and these are supplied as complete systems. If you are interested, you can add me on QQ at 3042129348 so that we can discuss this in more detail. Thank you!
It is best to use highly efficient enhanced shell-and-tube heat exchangers with inserts inside the tubes, or spiral flat tubes, corrugated tubes, and similar components.
This post was last edited by wiseboy on 2018-12-7 08:50. Dead zones and offset currents are issues that need to be taken into account in heat exchanger design; a proper design certainly takes these factors into consideration. Dead zones and offset currents cannot be completely avoided; our design is intended to take these effects into account. So what if it has high viscosity? With proper design, viscosity is inherently a design input parameter. Users only worry unless you apply so-called “experience” or design by guesswork. Secondly, it is meaningless to discuss these qualitatively. Who doesn’t know about dead zones and drift? ! If you ask me to design it, I can directly create a quantitative design. Its design is no different from that of ordinary heat exchangers.
Hello, original poster! For crude oil cooling applications, we have ready-made process equipment, and we have manufactured N sets of crude oil coolers for Middle East Petroleum! If you need it, feel free to contact me directly! QQ3042129348！ !