Ways In Which An Electrostatic Desalter Works

An electrostatic dehydrator is also commonly referred to as an electrostatic treater, electrostatic coalescer, or electrostatic separator. In this equipment, electricity is used to remove dispersed water droplets from oil. There are few good service providers who deal with electrostatic desalter transformer in Texas and nearby areas. Crude oil coming out of the upstream production separators is partly degassed before going into the dehydrator. The surface production of onshore facilities usually make use of mechanical (or thermal-mechanical) dehydrators to take out emulsified water from crude oil. Let us dive deeper into the functioning of electrostatic desalter in the next part of this article.

The wet crude oil is taken into the desalter with a specially designed distribution header and spreader that makes uniform flow through the unit possible in such a way that no section of the unit is under-loaded or over-loaded. The retention time for the crude oil inside the treater also gets extended to a considerable amount with no re-circulation occurrence inside the treater. This permits for the maximum removal of free water and dissolved salts from the crude oil in the least possible time.

The headers are fitted in the oil phase just below the electrical grid assembly, which can be considered as the heart of the electrostatic process.

The wet crude oil flows uniformly up through the grid assembly and an intense AC electrostatic field is applied. It is created by the high voltage charge imposed on the grid electrodes. The electrostatic field assists the smaller water droplets to combine together to form larger droplets and get separated under gravity from the crude oil.

The power electrical connection units and the Innovatively designed electrode grid connection ensures a balanced electrical load on the electric supply’s various phases. These power units are designed for desalting applications in scenario where the grids may be short-circuited. The short-circuit can be caused by excessive water slime in the crude oil. When complete reactance in the power unit is reached, it ensures that under such undesirable circumstances the units stay safe, until the situation gets improved. Depending on the crude oil’s expected quality and the salinity of the feed, minimum of two desalting stages may be required.

There are efficient desalting systems in the market that are capable of getting down the salt content to as low as 1 ppm weight. Multi-stage desalting systems require two or more desalting vessels placed in series.

The crude product exits the vessel and the effluent water from the vessel gets recycled. It is then mixed with the crude entering the vessel as an upstream flow in the system. The process gets repeated with the effluent water from each vessel.

Author: The author is a blogger and the article is about electrostatic desalter functioning.

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desalters Joined: December 23rd, 2018