Crude tank farm and atmospheric column at a gasoline-producing refinery — Crude tank farm and atmospheric column at battery limits.

Product information

Feedstock

The gasoline train starts at the tank farm, not at the reformer. Crude arriving at a gasoline-producing plant is a blend of boiling ranges, water, salt, sediment, and sulfur. Front-end equipment has one job: stabilize that mixture so atmospheric distillation can cut a naphtha fraction that treating and reforming can finish.

We specify receipt manifolds, desalters, fired heaters, atmospheric and vacuum columns, and the exchangers that recover heat from rundown. The assay sets metallurgy, tray count, and pump hydraulic. A nameplate copied from the last job is not a design basis.

If salt slips through, heater tubes foul and the overhead condenses chloride. If the cut point wanders, naphtha is either too heavy for the reformer or too light for vapor pressure. Feedstock equipment is judged by how quietly the rest of the plant runs.

Crude receipt manifolds and storage tanks — Crude receipt: tankage, manifolds, and sample points.

Crude receipt and tankage

Incoming crude is metered, sampled, and parked before it ever sees a heater. Tankage has to hold a changing slate without turning the rundown into a surprise. Mixers, tank heaters, and suction piping are sized so basic sediment and water stay out of the charge pumps and so the operator can blend two assays without starving the unit.

We treat the receipt system as process equipment, not civil work. Manifold valves, strainer duty, and the path from the dock or pipeline to the desalter set how much the rest of the train can trust the feed. A missed sample point here shows up later as a sulfur spike in naphtha or as a salt crash in the heater.

Two-stage electrostatic crude desalter vessels — Two-stage electrostatic desalting and wash-water circuit.

Desalting and dehydration

Salt and water that ride with the crude will not stay polite in a fired heater. Two-stage electrostatic desalters, mix valves, and wash-water balance determine how much chloride reaches the overhead condenser and how much brine the wastewater plant has to swallow. We size transformers, grids, and interface control against the worst assay in the slate, not the average one.

Wash water quality matters as much as vessel volume. Recycled water that is already sour or already salty just moves the problem downstream. The package includes the water circuit, the brine cooler, and the instrumentation that tells operations when the interface is lying.

Atmospheric and vacuum distillation columns — Atmospheric and vacuum columns cutting naphtha for gasoline.

Atmospheric and vacuum cuts

Atmospheric distillation makes the first gasoline-relevant cut: naphtha. Vacuum distillation then pulls gas oil that later cracking units can turn into more blendstock. Tray counts, pumparounds, and fired-heater duty are set so the naphtha endpoint stays inside the window the hydrotreater and reformer were designed for.

When a plant swings to a heavier or sourer crude, the column does not get a new name. It gets different heat, different reflux, and sometimes different internals. We revamp trays, wash zones, and overhead systems so the naphtha cut remains a feedstock the product side can finish, rather than a problem the blender has to hide.