Cooling Innovations for the Oil & Gas Industry

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Additional Information

Advantages in Water Treatment

3D TRASAR Technology Also Offers Additional Features

24x7 online measurement of corrosion rates on two chosen metallurgies like mild steel, copper, cupro-nickel etc.

Online simultaneous display and logging of pH, conductivity, ORP and turbidity to enhance the current mode of monitoring and control

Providing the best form of communication alarm prompting immediate attention and Web-enabled expert advice cutting down on response time to any contingency situation

Increasing cooling water cycles of concentration reduces water use, but the reduction comes at a cost. Stress on cooling systems increase proportionately when cycles of concentration increase. With higher stress comes the risk of scaling, corrosion and microbial fouling. 3D TRASAR technology helps to manage the increased system stress by real-time detection and replenishment of chemical actives, thus allowing customers to increase the ionic load in the CW system and save precious makeup water without risking exchanger performance. Reduced makeup consumption also helps in the plants’ TCO reduction and meeting their sustainability goals.

The heat exchanger’s heat transfer coefficient is a key metric used to measure cooling water system performance. Decreasing heat exchanger performance will become a limiting factor during increased production demand. With effective control of water quality and chemical actives, 3D TRASAR can bring significant improvement in the heat transfer coefficient leading to efficient production and process management and huge TCO reduction. It also reduces the need for expensive mechanical cleaning.

For example, the fouling of the refinery vacuum overhead condensers in the crude unit will increase the flash zone pressure in the vacuum tower leading to increase in low value residual oil production at the expense of high value cat cracker feed. Similarly, in the ethylene plant, fouling of the C3 splitter overhead condenser may cut back the reflux leading to lower-grade propylene.

Nalco 3D TRASAR technology’s positive role in maintaining heat exchanger cleanliness helps to reduce the energy consumption in the upstream and downstream processes. Thus, it indirectly impacts the emission to air. This stress management technology also helps in running the cooling water system with wastewater treatment recycled makeup; thus, reducing wastewater discharge. Thus, Nalco 3D TRASAR technology proved to be a holistic cooling water system management with direct contribution to refinery and petrochemicals TCO reduction, energy savings and environmental sustainability.

* The author is Regional Industry Development Manager, Asia Pacific, Energy Services Division, at Nalco

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