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A crude oil desalter is a device used in petroleum refineries to remove inorganic salts, water and sediment from the incoming petroleum crude oil feedstock before it is refined. This article focuses on the use of electrostatic desalters to produce a dehydrated, desalted crude oil with a low sediment content. Almost all refineries now use electrostatic desalters. However, there may still be a few refineries employing the older, less efficient method that utilizes chemicals and settling tanks.

Removal of the salts, water and sediment is necessary to avoid excessive fouling of equipment as well as corrosion from the generation of hydrochloric acid (HCl) by the hydrolysis of the chloride salts present in the incoming crude oil, in particular magnesium chloride (MgCl₂) and calcium chloride (CaCl₂). Any salts that are not removed represent a source of metals that can "poison" expensive catalysts used in various petroleum refinery processes..

Contaminants in crude oil as received by refineries

The amount of water, salts and sediment in the crude oil as received at petroleum refineries varies widely with the source of the crude oil, the prior processing of the crude oil at the source sites and with the mode of transporting the crude oil from its source to the refineries.

Typically, the raw crude oil produced by oil wells drilled into underground petroleum oil reservoirs is accompanied by brine (i.e., water containing inorganic chloride salts). The amount of chloride salts in the brine may be as high as 20 % by weight. Some of that brine is emulsified with the crude oil. The salts present in raw crude oil may be in the form of crystals dispersed in the oil and some of the salts are dissolved in the brine in their ionized form.

The salts present in petroleum crude oils are mainly chlorides with following approximate breakdown:

75 weight percent Sodium chloride ( NaCl )

15 weight percent Magnesium chloride ( MgCl₂ )

10 weight percent Calcium chloride ( CaCl₂ )

The sediment present in petroleum crude oils include clay, rust, iron sulfide ( FeS ), asphaltenes and various other water-insoluble particles.

The raw crude is usually subjected to processing at or very near to the oil field production sites in order to separate the oil from the brine before the oil is transported to petroleum refineries via pipeline, railway tank cars, tanker trucks or sea-going crude oil tankers. Such oilfield processing typically involves washing the oil with water to remove salts, some heating, use of demulsifying chemicals and simple settling vessels and tanks. In some cases, the oilfield processing includes electrostatic desalting as well. In general, the oilfield processing facilities strive to remove enough water, sediment and salts so that the transported crude oil contains less that 1 to 2 % by volume of sediment and water ( BS&W ) and less than 10 to 20 pounds of salts per 1000 barrels ( PTB ) of clean, water-free crude oil (which is equivalent to a salt content of 34 to 68 ppm by weight). Nevertheless, the crude oils as received at petroleum refineries have a salt content that ranges from a PTB of 10 to 300 (34 to 1,020 ppm by weight), based on spot samples of many different crude oils as delivered to refineries. Transportation by sea-going crude oil tankers is vulnerable to salt water pickup by the crude oil cargo.

Crude oil also contains trace elements such as vanadium ( V ), nickel ( Ni ), copper ( Cu ), cadmium ( Cd ), lead ( Pb ) and arsenic ( As ), all of which can cause problems in some of the various processing units in the petroleum refineries. They may be present in the form of oil-soluble organo-metallic compounds or as water-soluble salts.

Description of petroleum refinery electrostatic desalters

The crude oil distillation unit (CDU) is the first processing unit in virtually all petroleum refineries. The CDU distills the incoming crude oil into various fractions of different boiling ranges, each of which are then processed further in the other refinery processing units. Figure 1 below is a schematic flow diagram of a typical CDU and, as can be seen, the desalter (colored red for clarity) is typically installed in the heat exchange train that heats the incoming crude oil before it flows through a fired heater and into the distillation tower. The desalter is usually located at the point where the incoming crude oil has been heated to about 100 to 150 °C. The optimum desalter temperature varies somewhat with the crude oil source.

At that point, dilution water is injected and mixed into the crude oil and the resulting oil-water emulsion then enters the electrostatic desalter. The rate of dilution water required is about 4 to 10 % by volume of the crude oil rate. The optimum dilution water rate varies with the API gravity of the crude oil and with the desalter temperature.

Externally viewed, the typical electrostatic desalter is a a horizontal, cylindrical vessel as depicted in Figure 1. A cross-sectional end-view of the of the desalter's interior is shown in Figure 2 (below).

(CC) Drawing: Milton Beychok Figure 1: Schematic flow diagram of a typical crude oil distillation unit.

(CC) Drawing: Milton Beychok Figure 2: Cross-sectional end-view diagram of a horizontal, cylindrical crude oil desalter