AM-08-44 Diesel Recovery Options in Crude Unit Product Quality and Capacity Revamps

Description:

plants have a large volume of un-recovered virgin diesel. Recovering the diesel as soon as possible increases the diesel’s value and debottlenecks downstream units. The five major options for crude unit diesel recovery include: 1. Improve atmospheric tower and sidestripper operation 2. Recover diesel from the vacuum unit. 3. Recover diesel between the atmospheric unit and vacuum unit. 4. Integrate streams within the atmospheric-vacuum unit. 5. Recover the diesel from the gas oil products downstream of the crude unit. Examples are shown for each of these approaches. Economics drives the choice. Major factors include capability of the existing plant, blending pool limits on distillation and cloud, downstream processing constraints, crude quality, and local diesel values. Having a successful revamp instead of a failed project hinges on a thorough understanding of plant limits and the fundamentals of crude unit operation. The complete unit must be examined as a whole. Solutions must integrate heat balance evaluation, product qualities, hydraulics, corrosion, reliability, and flexibility.