Tough demands of oil-in-water applications

Crude oil refinement is a very energy intensive process. Steam and hot water are of big concern for processing. Its contamination leads to corrosion in e.g. pipes, boilers and heat exchangers. The monitoring of these provides enormous cost savings. Therefore, an oil-in-water analyser is required and in this case a TOC analyser is an excellent choice.

The production of steam and hot water is vital for the operation of many types of installations and facilities in crude oil refinement. High pressure steam is used for generating electrical power, for driving turbines, utility pumps and for process heating. Medium pressure steam is typically used for heat transfer to refinery products via heat exchangers and the low pressure steam is used for a variety of purposes e.g. pipe tracing, process heat exchange and deaerators. Although the temperature of the steam continues to decrease and it becomes hot condensate, it still contains a lot of energy and remains very valuable. Significant cost savings can be attained through the reuse of the so-called return condensate or steam condensate. However, the purity of this return condensate is of vital importance and should be monitored by an online TOC analyser that measures any oil type in a range from 10 ppb to over 100 ppm together with organics that do not belong to oil groups. At refineries, the alarm thresholds are about forty times cleaner than drinking water (100 to 1,000 ppb range). Therefore, the analytical performance of the TOC analyser must be excellent and correspond to the tough demands of the industry regarding accuracy, response times and traceability.

The monitoring systems of LAR are the perfect choice for this application. They are fast, reliable and able to measure many types of hydrocarbons at the same time. LAR's patented thermal oxidation technique guarantees the complete oxidation of all carbons without exception, negating the need to use expensive catalysts. This totally sealed system, maintained at a stable overpressure, means that only the sample is measured without any environmental interferences. Its well designed multi-loop injection system has reduced internal dimensions and minimised wetted surfaces, as well as no dead volumes, resulting in the prevention of memory effects. The quick and easy calibration and validation feature of the LAR analysers confirms the accuracy of the results within minutes and with a touch of a button. Hence, using these analysers the operators not waste expensive condensate and belongs to the most difficult application on the market.