Effect of operating conditions on crude oil fouling through CFD simulations

Fouling in crude preheat trains in petroleum refineries affect the heat recovery from product streams significantly. Clear understanding on the effects of various operating conditions on fouling is still lacking among the researchers and practitioners. In the present study, a three-dimensional CFD model of a heat exchanger tube has been developed to predict the rate of coke deposition and fouling resistance through species-transport framework, in which, petroleum, asphaltenes and non-asphaltenes are represented as lumped pseudo-components in the crude oil. Asphaltenes particles were introduced into the bulk of crude oil and considered to be the only reactant for coke formation. The coke deposition rate and fouling resistance are predicted by varying the flow velocity, wall shear stress and surface roughness. From the CFD simulations, it is observed that the fouling resistance reduces under wall shear stress and surface roughness conditions as compared to no-slip and smooth surfaces, respectively.

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