Reasons for high poor-solvent hydrocarbon content and how to address it
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Recently, the plant’s load was increased, with the extraction tower operating at 110% of its capacity. Things were fine at first, but starting yesterday, the hydrocarbon content in the lean solvent increased rapidly, reaching 2000 ppm. What could be the cause of this? Raising the temperature at the bottom of the recovery tower to 182 degrees and maintaining a vacuum level of around -53 kPa does not yield very good results
The rapid increase in hydrocarbon content is caused by too high a flow rate.
This post was last edited by chentao1985 on 2010-4-11 at 16:06. When we increased the operating load from 90% to 110%, the hydrocarbon content in the lean solvent was not very high at first, around 800 ppm; but after just 1 day, it rose to 2000 ppm. When I took over, the temperature at the bottom of the recovery tower was 178 degrees, and the vacuum level was -55 kPa. Hydrocarbon content: 2000 ppm. But I increased the temperature to 180 degrees and the vacuum level to -52 kPa, yet the hydrocarbon content remained high; that’s just the way it is! The liquid level of the water in the recovery tower is around 20%.