Improving crude oil fouling monitoring, prediction and mitigation strategies in refinery preheat trains

Abstract

Traditional heat exchanger monitoring methodologies rely on fouling resistance calculations that neglect the effects of fouling on pressure drops, and are not able to predict future performance as a function of process conditions, heat exchangers geometry and network configurations. In this paper, an improved approach to monitoring of fouling in refinery pre-heat trains that rely on rigorous predictive models is summarised and illustrated with an industrial case study.