Crude oil desalting using hydrocyclones

Dilute dispersion/emulsion of ultrafine water droplets containing a variety of salts is usually present in crude oil. It is very useful to remove the water and the dissolved salts, so that corrosion, plugging, and fouling of equipment can be prevented. Electrical desalter is an effective method in crude oil desalting. In order to overcome the shortcomings of electrical desalting system, such as larger equipment volume, complex high tension electricity system, a new process of crude desalting that are based on hydrocyclone technology is designed. Preliminary industrial experiments have been carried out to prove the feasibility of desalting using hydrocyclone. The effects of several dimensionless units, such as Reynolds number, Euler number and pressure drop ratio were studied. An increase in inlet Reynolds number will decrease the pressure drop ratio. With an increase in inlet Reynolds number, Euler number increases gradually. Under the condition that Reynolds number of inlet is ranging from 5000 to 5800, the water concentrations can decrease from 5 vol%similar to 8 Vol% to less than 0.40 vol% and the salt concentrations is reduced from less than 8 mg L-1 to 3 mg L-1 after handled.