How to handle contaminated oil in petroleum refining
Thread Content
Gentlemen, I’m interested in learning how the heavy polluted oil generated at various stages in petroleum refining is handled. For example, what happens to the polluted oil that results from automatic backwashing during continuous reforming? How much polluted oil is produced by an average refinery, and how is it typically dealt with? Is it sent for coking, or is it reused in the refining process? If it is reused, is it added to crude oil or to other types of oil from intermediate stages?
Heavily polluted oil is generally paid for through coking reprocessing
Most of the contaminated oil needs to be sent to units corresponding to its boiling range for reprocessing; it can be sent to coking units if it contains much coke, or to residue hydrogenation units if it is heavier in composition, while lighter fractions can be sent to light hydrocarbon recovery units.
In general reprocessing, try to avoid using crude oil