A Mid-Continent refinery processing significant volumes of heavy Canadian bitumen-based crude was seeing detrimental performance impacts to its desalter and waste water treatment operations. Processing this opportunity crude created instability in the rag layer control and high oil & grease (O&G) in the desalter effluent brine (see Figure 1).
盐水中的O&G含量给废水处理设施带来了巨大的挑战。为了防止超出工厂的排放限制和因违规而遭到罚款，必须降低机会原油率并削减原油吞吐量。
想要做到这些，需要使用解决方案来提高这些重质机遇原油的混合灵活性，同时又不造成脱盐装置的故障和盐水中过多的油和油脂。几家有竞争力的工艺处理公司进行了三次试验，均未能改善这种情况。
为了设计一种化学处理方案，最大限度地提高原油加工的机会，同时从脱盐装置中产生无油的盐水，Veolia在几个月内对多个脱盐装置样品进行了现场模拟和实验室工作。
这种深入的鉴定样品协议有助于结合原油、原油混合物和工艺参数的变化构建一个强大的处理程序。
Veolia was confident that the innovative and newly patented treatment solution proposed, BrineCLEAN, would solve the challenge under all modes of operations. This included desalter continuous mud-washing, which was of critical importance to maintain desalter cleanliness.
图 1 - 未经处理（左）和经过Veolia处理（右）的盐水流出物
结果
Within the first few hours of initiating BrineCLEAN, Veolia’s patented desalter brine quality assurance program, the rag layer in the desalter was reduced by ~30%. At the same time, the desalter’s effluent brine O&G content was reduced by over 95% (see Figure 2).
在采用BrineCLEAN方案之前的两年，出水盐水中的O&G平均为1,900 ppm，其中包括由竞争工艺公司进行的三次试验，都没有产生效果。
The first year of operation using BrineCLEAN resulted in an average O&G level in the effluent brine of 75 ppm: a decrease of 96%.
The refinery was able to process higher rates of heavy opportunity crude which they estimated improved their profits over $1.5MM/year.
此外，Veolia的BrineCLEAN程序还提供了其他几项重要工艺优势，包括：
- 稳定的脱盐器操作，运行成本较低：
- 增加盐和固体的去除量，增加油/水的混合，减少化学品的消耗。
- 在设计流速下连续洗泥，脱盐器更清洁
- 提高废水处理厂的稳定性，使其在满足排放规范方面具有更高的可靠性，同时降低了运行成本。
- 减少原油预热交换器设备组中的污垢，从而降低了能耗和维护成本。
- 降低原油塔顶的氯化物，提高资产可靠性并降低塔顶化学处理成本
- 降低废油回收和再处理成本。
图2 - Veolia正在申请专利的方法处理前后的脱盐盐水油污