We have a normal SWS, reboiled with steam. 6 years ago we had to retube the reboiler on the run. We would have gone out of service with half of the refinery if we stopped the SWS for the 2 weeks that were needed for repair, thus we decided to run the steam directly to the stripper through the reboiler return (2 small outages to disconnect the old and connect the new pipe and vice-versa).
It worked well, but we obviously lost some capacity and we had issues with high pH in SWS bottoms (pH of around 9 in BFW system). If you use your SWS rundown in the desalters this can create some problems.
