THIS PAPER PROVIDED THE BASIS FOR AN ARTICLE PUBLISHED BY HYDROCARBON PROCESSING IN ITS JUNE

2013 EDITION (HP SPECIAL REPORT ON PROCESS/PLANT OPTIMISATION).

CRUDE PREHEAT PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS FOR BALANCING
EFFICIENCY AND OPERABILITY

Author:

Jenny Zhang
Principal Process Engineer - Process Technology Group
FOSTER WHEELER, Reading, UK

Introduction
Critical attention must be paid to the design of the crude distillation unit (CDU)
pre-heat train in order to achieve high energy efficiency, operational flexibility
and reliability. There are a number of pitfalls that can easily lead to unnecessary
expenditure or unsatisfactory operation. Some designers tend to replicate a
previous proven design, without full consideration of the crude characteristics.
Others focus on implementing designs with computer-aided tools to generate the
heat exchanger network (HEN) without sufficient consideration of the effect of
heat integration on the plant operation. This paper is aimed at describing a
practical and systematic design approach by integrating process design, process
control, process simulation and pinch analysis, as outlined below in Figure 1,
Crude Preheat Train Design Flowchart.


Figure 1 Crude Preheat Train Design Flowchart
Design Basis
(Further
Development)
Initial design development:
Set the desired column overflash to achieve the
distillation product qualities and internal refluxes
Set the required flash zone conditions
Review how much heat can be usefully used for
inter-unit heat integration
Set the number and location of pumparounds
based on heating and cooling curves
Determine the flange ratings constraints and how
much pressure drop is allowed in the system
Estimate the initial system pressure profile
Preflash Drum/Prefractionator requirement to
achieve the desired design pressure
Simulation Analysis
Pinch Analysis
PFD Review
Datasheets, P&IDs
etc.
Develop definitive design:
Simulation of the base design case design
Pinch studies to construct HEN
Further simulation development with HEN
Further development of sensitivity simulations and
heat integrations
Data analysis and design scheme comparisons /
selections
Updating the pressure profiles to optimise the number
of duties in series and parallel
Optimise crude splits and pumparound rates
Early input in operational requirements:
Process Control requirements
Required minimum turndown
Start-up and shut-down schedule and
procedure
Start-up and shut-down heating/cooling circuits
Design Basis
(Developed)
Set the design basis for:
The crudes to be processed
The desired yields and product specifications
Hydraulic Analysis
Initial Simulation
Analysis
Further develop design basis:
Philosophies for inter- and intra-unit heat
integration
Basis for heat exchanger optimisation in
terms of energy targets, temperature
approaches and economic criteria
Operational
Considerations


Basis of Design (Developed)
One of the major energy demands within refineries comes from the need to heat
the crude feedstock upstream of the crude distillation column to obtain the
desired flash and distillation yields. Conversely heat removal is required to
provide the required internal refluxes and to cool the product streams. Whilst
the main objective of the crude preheat train design is to minimise the overall
energy consumption by maximising heat recovery, there is more to the design of
a crude preheat train than simply the design of the HEN.
When starting the design of the preheat train, the basic parameters, such as
feedstock, product yields and product specifications will have already been
determined but other philosophies will have to be developed in order to progress
the design. Generally the approach for a revamped design will be different from
a new design, as the revamped design will have many existing constraints, set
by the current configuration.
Operational Considerations
The owners operations team may have strong views on the preheat train
configuration, especially if it is a revamp. There may be a need to provide
redundancy for some heat exchanger services to allow for exchanger cleaning in
order to maximise run length. Operators may also have strong views on the way
the unit controls are configured and how the unit is started up and shut down.
A strategy needs to be developed for starting up the CDU and vacuum distillation
unit (VDU). This needs to take into account operations such as:
Establishing hot and cold circulations for removing water and achieving
on-specification products in both the CDU and VDU.
Heating up the feeds and cooling products during these operations. This
may require additional start-up and shutdown lines and involve alternate
uses for equipment during these operations, especially for atmospheric
and vacuum residue.
Alternate routings may require more severe operating conditions for
some items of equipment and affect mechanical design conditions.
If inter-unit heat integration is going to be considered, then the shutdown
schedule of all the units will have to be compared and reconciled. The key
sections need to be designed such that operation can be continued in case other
units are down. This might result in additional equipment being required.
Basis of Design (Further Development)
There will be a need to establish the overall philosophy for the heat integration.
This could involve heat integration within the unit or heat integration with other
units. Although most consideration is given to intra-unit heat integration, inter-
unit heat integration is equally important for the overall refinery energy efficiency.
Apart from 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
typically used for steam generation, but these are high-level heat sources and
can be considered for the crude preheat to reduce the overall plant fuel


consumption. However, a careful analysis of the unit shutdown philosophy
needs to be undertaken and this could result in additional investment in
equipment being required to allow operation during unit shutdowns and process
upsets.
The client will generally have a payback philosophy, which might be in terms of
simple payback or internal rates of return on incremental investment set by the
owner. For revamps particularly, the extent of heat recovery might need to be
limited to stay within a pre-determined overall unit cost budget.
The owner may have energy targets or expectations for the preheat train. This
could be expressed in terms of overall energy targets for the unit, temperature
approaches or target heater inlet temperatures. Usually global (whole unit)
targets are set, with local minimum temperatures set for individual exchangers
which might be close to any temperature pinch.
Initial Simulation Analysis
For a new design, the target product cutpoints, feed/product rates and
specifications required to set up an initial simulation will generally have been
derived from a linear programming study. Overall heating and cooling curves are
then generated from the initial simulation and used as a basis for a high-level
heat integration analysis.



Figure 2 A Typical CDU Schematic
At a high level, the overall heating and cooling curves will show whether there is
an excess or a shortfall in the available heat from the process to meet the pre-
heating requirements of the crude feedstock and also give an indication of the
scope for integration with other process units or facilities. The balance between
heat availability and demand is dependent on the crude feedstock. For lighter
crudes, more of the heat is recovered at lower temperatures and consequently,
lower preheat temperatures are usually obtained.



Figure 3 Composite Heating and Cooling Curves
It is likely that a standalone CDU will have a shortfall in the heat available from
the hot streams within the unit. If this is the case, supply of heat from other units
to the CDU might 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, there is likely to be
excess heat available in a heat-integrated CDU and VDU complex, which can be
used for reboiling light ends columns, generating steam or supplying heat to
other users.
The effect of the number of pumparounds and draw temperatures on the heater
inlet temperature should be investigated in order to achieve an optimum design.
It is also usual to determine the target global approach temperature at the initial
design stage. An example of the results of this type of analysis is shown in
Figure 4, which shows the optimum global temperature approach for a particular
network.
Pinch
Q
C MIN

Q
H MIN




Figure 4 Total Cost Targets for the Crude Distillation Unit
Start-up and shut-down scenarios need to be considered at an early stage,
especially when there is heat integration between units. For example, if the CDU
and VDU are heat-integrated, 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 as the timing of these operations
is not the same for each unit.
For a revamp, it is necessary to model the current operation, bench-marking the
model against the operating data before simulating the new operation. It will
then be possible to examine the rating of the existing heat exchangers to
determine whether or not the required heat inputs and removals can be achieved
using the existing configuration. If a reconfiguration is required, looking at the
heating and cooling curves gives an overview of the heat recovery possibilities
and current cross pinch heat exchange. However, the constraints around the
existing configuration may dominate the approaches taken for setting targets.
Hydraulic Analysis
It is important to ensure that the pressure profile is developed and managed in
parallel with the heat integration. The preheat train will often have multiple
pumps and many heat exchangers in series, causing the operating pressure to
approach the 600

pound flange rating limits in some areas. By paying attention
to the pressure profile it is often possible to ensure that the design pressures
remain just below key flange rating limits. This will give substantial capital cost
savings, compared with a design which exceeds the flange rating limits. The
practical design approach is to establish the pressure profile at an early stage
and continually review it in order to ensure a good design.


The pressure profile starts at the crude feed tank. A decision needs to be made
as to whether the crude is to be blended and supplied from a crude blending tank
or blended in-line downstream of the crude storage tanks. In-line blending is
often accomplished using relatively low-pressure blending pumps within the tank
farm (some of which might be on recycle), and a crude charge pump to boost the
pressure at the CDU unit limit. Use of a crude charge pump allows the tank to
be drawn down to a lower level, because the Net Positive Suction Head (NPSH)
1

required for the low-pressure 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. Use of a crude charge pump at the CDU battery limit has the further
advantage that operating the unit on total recirculation becomes relatively
straight-forward, making start-up easier.
A typical CDU pre-heat train will comprise three main sections:

Figure 5 A Typical Preheat Train Schematic
Initially the crude needs to be heated sufficiently to allow for the removal
of bottom sediment and water in the desalter. Often the temperature is
allowed to float within an operating range that gives a crude viscosity
which allows for good water removal, whilst ensuring that the wet crude
remains below its vapour 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.

1
The Net Positive Suction Head is the difference in metres (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 vapour
pressure of the fluid.



Following the desalter, further heat recovery takes place and a flash drum
or flash column might be installed, especially for lighter crudes where a
high preheat temperature is to be achieved giving rise to high vapour
pressures.
Finally the crude is heated up to the heater inlet temperature.
In evaluating design pressures, heat exchanger burst tube scenarios may also
need to be considered.
At the start of the design of the preheat train, a rough pressure profile should be
developed, 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 needs to be updated as
the heat exchanger design progresses. For revamps the design pressure
constraints can often have a major influence on where new exchangers can be
fitted into the design. For a new unit, the start-up 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 such that it is above the bubble point
pressure. This will suppress vaporisation, leading to a more controlled
operation, a reduced risk of fouling caused by salt deposition, and should avoid
mechanical problems resulting from slug flow. However, if the pressure balance
is marginal and two-phase flow would be expected in the section due to
variations in the crude feedstock, the unit must be designed accordingly.
Operating within a two-phase flow regime can give advantages in terms of better
heat recovery and lower operating pressure. Units have operated successfully in
this way without excess fouling problems, provided that the upstream desalting
operation (double- or triple-stage desalting may be required) is operated
efficiently. If a unit is to be designed for two-phase operation, it is important to
consider the whole range of crudes to be processed. Operation with less
vaporisation than the design basis will lead to lower fluid velocities, poorer heat
transfer coefficients and hence lower performance than anticipated.
The operating pressure of the preflash/prefractionator will affect the amount of
light ends being flashed directly to the crude column and the vaporisation of
crude from the heater, as well as the crude column distillation performance. The
optimum pressure should be selected following a parametric analysis of the
effect of the pressure on the crude column overflash/distillation and the efficiency
of the heat integration.
In order to ensure that the flowrate into the furnace is controllable, the operating
pressure should be high enough to ensure that no vaporisation 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 taking account the following:
Clean and fouled heat exchanger operation
Potential use of heat exchanger by-passes
Pre-flash vessel operating pressure flexibility


Maximum Reid Vapour Pressure (RVP) of the design crude
Alternative crudes
It should be noted that low heater flow trips only protect against low pass flow
and not total loss of crude flow. On loss of crude pressure there will be
vaporisation upstream of the flow orifices, and any flow trips will become
unreliable, due to the higher vapour velocities.
Pinch Analysis (Heat Exchanger Network (HEN) design)
Pinch analysis is a key design tool used 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, and designers should never rely solely on the
automatically generated solutions. The HEN generated by the software may
represent the best energy efficiency, but can often lead to a design with high
capital requirement and little flexibility. A practical design demands thorough
analysis, and requires the designers to take charge of configuring 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, whilst a preheat train for a CDU may be
manageable, an integrated CDU and VDU might be too complex for the software
to analyse.
Some key points to consider in order to achieve a practical heat exchanger
network design are summarised below:
1. The overall heat recovery system design needs to be optimised to
achieve an economic target for energy usage when compared to total
capital expenditure (CAPEX), taking into account both the preheat train
and cooling equipment.
2. For inter-unit heat integration, there is a trade-off between the overall
plant energy efficiency and operability. HEN design software often
presents solutions with a large number of small heat exchangers and in
an arrangement that would be awkward to build and control. Often these
need to be rationalised to obtain a good overall solution.
3. Where the achievement of the targeted cooling temperatures is critical,
for example to ensure a safe rundown of products to tankage, cooling
utilities (steam 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 by-passing may be
required to avoid temperature pinch-out.
4. It is common, especially on larger scale CDUs, 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, whilst
increasing the level of heat integration, enhancing heat recovery.
However, an increased numbers 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 plant energy
efficiency and operability. However sophisticated control systems can be


configured to use ramping functions to help the operators optimise the
splits and smooth the transitions during crude composition or cutpoint
changes.
5. The crude preheat upstream of the desalter needs careful consideration in
order to ensure that the temperature remains within the desirable range,
say 120 to 150
o
C. For revamps, it may be necessary to control the
desalter temperature more tightly to avoid constraints. In this situation, one
solution might be to split one of the duties into two, with one part duty
upstream of the desalter and the second part duty downstream, allowing
adjustment of the desalter temperature without too significant an effect on
the heat recovery.
6. The HEN should be designed to allow the column fractionation
performance to be controlled by varying the circulating reflux and/or
quench duties. Typically this is achieved by varying the flow rate of the
circulating refluxes and/or providing a trim cooler in one or more
pumparounds.
7. The control of temperature by by-passing exchangers on the crude side
is not recommended due to the tendency for increased fouling at low
crude velocities.
8. As a general rule, 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. Recovery of heat from overhead streams can lead to
dew-point corrosion problems, potential contamination problems in the
event of tube leakage and, if the exchangers are elevated, significant extra
cost due to the need to mount the exchangers in a structure. In some
instances, running side products down warm to the receiving units will give
better overall heat integration. However, warm rundown limits the heat
that can be recovered from the rundown streams and recovery of heat from
overheads streams may need to be considered.
9. For fouling services, if long run lengths are required, the exchangers
should be placed in parallel/series line-up to allow on-line isolation and
cleaning. This is particularly an issue with crude and residue streams.
Strategies employed 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. It should be
noted that pressure drops will also increase with fouling and, whilst
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 pumparounds are allocated against
crude splits, it is necessary to re-evaluate the pumparound rates. Ideally for a
particular heat exchanger service the mass rate, M multiplied by the specific
heat, Cp (MxCp) for either side should be similar in value. In that way the
heating and cooling curves will be approximately parallel and the heat exchanger
area will be minimised. It is therefore possible to optimise the pumparound rates
and crude splits, where there are parallel exchangers, to minimise 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 and this is dependent on the characteristics of the crude.
The optimised 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 Figure 6.

Figure 6 Some Typical Crude Yield Variations
As the crude to product price differential dominates refinery margins, refiners try
to process less expensive (including opportunity) crudes and/or to produce more
valuable products to improve profitability. Therefore the feedstock to the CDU
may be expected to vary significantly during the plants lifetime. Many owners try
and cover this variation by specifying multiple crudes and blends in the basis of
design for a new plant. An alternate approach would be to allow for higher
vapour pressures, design temperature and pressures, and higher heater duties
in the design to provide operational flexibility.
If the unit is designed for more than one crude, 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 crude and the hotter end of the preheat train for the heavier crude.
The unit controls need to 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), (UA) values are input into the simulation and the
uncontrolled process conditions, including temperatures, pressures and heat
exchanger duties, are resultant from the specified equipment data.
Rating mode can be used to simulate the operation of the unit (including over-
design) for the normal operating cases, with exchangers in a clean, moderately
or heavily fouled state or at turn-down. 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
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Crude A Crude B
L
i
q
u
i
d

V
o
l
u
m
e

%

Variations in Crude Oil Yield
Residue Gasoil Kerosene Gas/Naphtha


temperature pinch-out. This might result in a need for additional bypasses or an
increase in some utility cooling duties. In some cases the utility cooling design
duties might be set by these rating cases.
The other major use of rating simulations is to try to reduce the net over-design
resulting from the overlay of several design cases. This tends to be performed
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 CAPEX
benefits.
Summary
An optimised and practical preheat train design requires thorough process
analysis along with detailed simulation and pinch studies. It is important that a
systematic approach, as illustrated in Figure 1, is used throughout the process to
ensure the best design is achieved, in line with the objectives of the client.
Through this approach, the fundamental design steps of setting the design
targets, evaluating the design schemes and selecting the optimum design, can
be carried out in a systematic way to cover all the design aspects, including
operability, controllability and energy efficiency.
2012 Foster Wheeler. All rights reserved.

AUTHORS BIO
The author of this article, Jenny Zhang, is a Principal Process Engineer working as a
member of the Process Technology Group within Foster Wheeler's Process
Engineering Department in Reading, UK. Jenny has over 20 years' experience,
specialising in process design, simulation, process RAM studies and energy
optimisation covering refining, LNG, GTL and CCS projects. Jenny holds a MPhil
degree in Chemical Engineering from UMIST, Manchester, UK, and a BSc in Chemical
Engineering from East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China.
The author would like to acknowledge the assistance provided by her Foster Wheeler
colleagues, Christopher M Jones, Group Manager Process Technology, Bernard M
Hagger, Chief Engineer Refining and Philip G Marden, Principal Consultant Process
Engineer in the preparation of this article.