Jim Trigg - GE Water
Kris Kohl - GE Water
A US Gulf Coast refinery adopted an aggressive strategy of blending tight oils, including Eagle Ford (EF), to significantly increase its profit margin and supply flexibility. This blend contained significantly higher levels of solids and metals.
Unfortunately, it also presented two obstacles that added to the cost of operations. First, the desalter suffered from periodic oil under-carry in the desalter brine; second, high metals loading limited the refinery’s ability to process vacuum tower bottoms (VTB) in the fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCCU). The refiner needed a solution that would allow them to maintain great desalter performance while taking advantage of the margin improvement gained from increasing the rate of VTB processed in the FCCU.