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The aim of desalting is to clean the oil from:
If the salt content of the crude oil is greater than 10 lb/1000 bbl (expressed as NaCl), the crude requires to desalting before it can be fed into the atmospheric distillation unit. This has to minimize the fouling and the corrosion caused by salt deposition on heat transfer surfaces and acids formed by decomposition of the chloride salts. In addition, some metals in inorganic compounds dissolved in water emulsified with crude oil, which can cause catalyst deactivation in catalytic processing units, are particularly rejected in the desalting process. The trend toward running heavier crude oils has increased the importance of efficient desalting of crudes. Crude oil often contains water, inorganic salts, suspended solids, and water-soluble trace metals. As a first step in the refining process, to reduce corrosion, plugging, and fouling of equipment and to prevent poisoning the catalysts in processing units, these contaminants must be removed by desalting (dehydration).The desalting process will help the refinery to lower:
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