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Optimization of water use in oil refinery

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Optimization of Water Use in Oil Refinery
Michele Anze*, Rita M. B. Alves and Claudio A. O. Nascimento

LSCP/CESQ - Department of Chemical Engineering, Polytechnic School University of São

Paulo, Av. Prof. Luciano Gualberto, n. 380, trav. 3, CEP 05508-900 São Paulo, SP, Brazil.
*
e-mail address: michele@pqi.ep.usp.br

1. Introduction

In most process industries water is vital in many operations and is utilized for different
purposes like product formulation, cooling, high-purity water make-up water systems, general
plant service water, waste conveyance/transfer, potable/sanitary service and fire protection
(Rosain, 1993).
In traditional approaches the industry water required is supplied by fresh water and all
of the effluents are grouped in a single stream that is cleaned before disposal by appropriate
technologies in series. This method is referred to as an end of pipe non-distributed waste-
water cleanup (Koppol et al., 2003).
However, processes and systems using water are being subjected to the increasing
costs of wastewater treatment to meet the increasingly stringent environmental regulations,
the growing demand for fresh water, the scarcity of good quality water around the world for
different purposes, economic consideration, growing public concern for the quality of the
environment, and restrictions on the expansion of water use at many sites (Goldblatt, 1993).
All these factors have created a powerful economic driving force to rationalize the water use
and have increased the need for better water management and wastewater minimization, i.e., it
deals with a water/wastewater allocation-planning problem. It consists of finding the
minimum amount of fresh water that each water-using process needs, together with the
maximum amount of water effluent from these processes that can be reused in other processes
(Bagajewicz et Koppol, 2001).
Water and wastewater minimization techniques have been widely researched,
developed and applied to process industries. After the seminal work of Takama et al. (1980)
on water allocation in petroleum industry, several papers have been published and many
solution techniques have been proposed. Those papers published until year 2000 were
presented by Bagajewicz (2000). This review presented various techniques employed for
water optimization problem in companies with high complexity, such as oil refineries and
petrochemical industries. A recent review of Foo (2009) focused on pinch technology and
analyzed the techniques presented to date. In general, there are four approaches to water
minimization: process changes, reuse, regeneration reuse and regeneration recycling.
The main focus of this work is to present a general procedure to analyze the
water/wastewater allocation-planning problem and its application in a real-life situation – a
Brazilian oil refinery. Furthermore, while literature studies only consider water uses in the
production processes, this study also includes water uses at utilities plant and general uses. As
a result, the industry saves money, gains community trust and shows sensitivity to the
environment.

2. Problem Statement

The oil processing requires a large amount of water, mainly for cooling and steam
generation. The worldwide reference for specific water consumption in refineries is between
0.7 and 1.2 m³ of water per m³ of crude oil processed (Diepolder, 1992). The case study is an
oil refinery located in a region with a high concentration of industrial activities and nearby to
an urban agglomeration. Thus, the scarcity of good quality water and competition with human
consumption are important reasons to develop this study. This refinery refines nearly 27
thousands m³ of petroleum per day and consumes about 1.12 m³of water per m³ of crude oil
processed. The amount of water used is sufficient to meet the human demand of the city
where the refinery is located.

The water system in this industry involves three fresh water sources available to
satisfy the demands of each water-user and a set of water treatment operations available to
reduce the freshwater consumption in the site and/or to achieve the environmental limits
imposed on the wastewater discharge. The water used in this industry may be classified in
several types: the tap water for administrative use, industrial water for the cooling tower
make-up water and process uses and demineralized water for steam generation and some
process uses, as well water for fire protection and other services. The tap water has a high cost
for the industry because it competes against the domestic use due the urban agglomeration
nearby. The demineralized water is also expensive due the use of tap water as raw material
and the demineralization process as well. All the wastewater is sending to physical and
biological treatment and discharged.
Refinery water system can be represented as shown in the Figure 1 in order to make its
evaluation easier. The water system is represented by four sets considered for studying: all
possible sources of water for industry; all treatments needed to adequate the water quality to
use; all uses of water in the internal processes, including utilities and general purposes; and all
processing of the final effluent.

Figure 1 – Refinery water system.

 The aim of studying the water system of this refinery is to evaluate all possible
strategies to minimize the water consumption and wastewater generation.

3. Methodology

In the traditional approaches, the water use assessment begins by treating the effluent
before discharging it back into the environment or reusing it in the process. Thus, the aim is to
mitigate adverse impacts of wastewater discharge into the environment. However the
solutions obtained by these methods are often technically difficult and costly to implement.
An optimization study on water uses should start by analyzing the causes of the great
consumption of water besides of wastewater generation: the internal processes that use water.
Internal processes and treatments necessary to adjust the water quality have to be modeled,
taking into account the water quality after the treatments and also the costs of treatment. The
optimized network results in minimizing the volume of freshwater required and,
consequently, in reducing the effluent generated compared to the original network. It is the
best solution under technical, economic and environmental aspects.
Moreover, while studies found in literature consider only use of water in the
production processes, a complete study should also includes water uses at utilities plant
(cooling towers and steam generation) and for general proposes (human uses, fire fighting and
services).
The methodology consists of specific steps: 1) to collect several data; 2) to evaluate
the whole process in order to identify points of great consumption of water and wastewater
generation; 3) to classify the water by type of use and the wastewater by level and kind of
contaminants; 4) to identify all possible opportunities to apply strategies for optimizing the
water allocation in the plant, including rationalization techniques, process or operational
conditions changes, water re-use, regeneration and re-use and regeneration and recycling; 5)
to optimize the final structure and finally 6) to evaluate economically the solution presented.
Although the emphasis is to show results for oil refineries, this systematic
methodology is valid for any process plants where water/wastewater should be reduced,
independent of their complexity or dimensionality.

4. Data Collection

There are fundamental issues associated with data extraction for the design of water
systems, which, according to Smith (2005), comprises the following 6 steps.

• Water balance: It’s the starting point. For an old design, due to lack of information, poor
records and poor instrumentation, the water balance can be calculated with maximum 90%
reliability.

• Contaminants: The determination of contaminant species must include as few

contaminants as absolutely necessary, like those which limit reuse of the process water or its
recycling.

• Flow rate constraints: Only the largest streams should be considered due to frequent cost-
ineffectiveness of reuse and recycling of small streams.
• Data accuracy: It is highly recommended to collect approximate data first and them to
carry out a preliminary analysis.

• Limiting conditions: The limiting contaminated water acceptable to each operation should
be determined in order to establish the possibility of water reuse/recycling, with or without
regeneration.

• Treatment data: The information about the efficiency of treatment plants is used to
determine concentrations in the outlet streams and their reuse/recycling potential in the
process.

5. Water Consumption Reduction by Process or Operational Conditions Changes

One of the alternatives to overcome the difficulties related to reduce water

consumption and wastewater generation in industrial processes is through process or
operational conditions changes. The proposal changes discussed below are intended to be
applied in the refinery studied.

• Cooling Towers

Petroleum refineries have very large cooling tower systems. In many refineries, make-
up water to the cooling tower can account for up to 50% of the total demand for fresh water.
For this reason, studies to reduce water consumption in this area, as the following ones,
greatly impacts the refinery water system.

Cooling Process System

Since the major water used in the refinery is for the cooling process system, changing
from wet cooling towers to a hybrid water/air cooling system is been proposed. The change of
the cooling water system minimize the lost by evaporation, entrainment and purge and as
consequence to minimize the fresh water (make-up water) consumption. The water is cooled
first by the air cooler and the final temperature approach is achieved by the wet cooling tower.
Figures 2a and 2b show schematically the base case (wet cooling tower only) and the hybrid
system (Alves et at., 2006).

(a) (b)

Figure 2 – Cooling Process System. (a) Base Case; (b) Hybrid System.
Cooling Tower Blowdown

Solid contaminant levels have to be reduced in order to maintain efficient cooling

tower operation. One way to do that is to bleed a portion of the recirculating water on a
regular basis – blowdown. The amount of solids in the blowdown may vary from 20-300
mg/L depending on the source make-up water and the frequency of the blowdown. To
minimize waste, the cooling tower blowdown can be treated. Thus, depending on the treated
effluent quality it can be recycled to the cooling tower or to another purpose such as fired
fighting or service water.

Concentration Ratio of Cooling Towers

Increasing the concentration ratio will decrease the cooling tower blowdown and thus
decrease make-up water consumption. However, increased minerals in the water can degrade
tower performance over time and increase the cost of cooling tower chemicals.
From a practical point of view the concentration ratio is limited to a maximum of
about 10. This is a reasonable goal for most cooling towers. Achieving more than 10 cycles
would be difficult while deriving a reasonable return on investment, unless zero discharge is
the ultimate goal.
Maximizing cooling tower cycles offers many benefits in the way it reduces water
consumption, minimizes waste generation, decreases chemical treatment requirements, and
diminishes overall operating costs. Cooling tower cycles can be maximized in a variety of
ways. These include pH adjustment, chemical scale inhibitors, and pretreatment of the tower
make-up water.
Potential cost savings vary from plant to plant, depending on the cost of fresh water,
waste disposal costs, chemical treatment dosages, and energy. Nevertheless, in addition to the
environmental, health, and safety improvements, some studies show that the return on
investment for improving cooling tower efficiency is typically less than one year.

• Steam Consumption

Steam generation is the second largest consumer of water in an oil refinery. A way to
reduce steam consumption is replacing direct heating by steam injection for indirect heating.
The refinery plant studied uses a stripper by direct injection of steam for the separation
of specific contaminants from wastewater generated. At this configuration, steam is injected
at the bottom of the tower and leaves the top with the contaminant. The steam used is
obtained in a boiler process unit, which is fed by high quality water provided by the
demineralization unit. All of these increases the steam generation cost. After its utilization to
strip volatile components from a contaminated liquid streams, it is condensed and collected as
a contaminated water and treated.
The change proposed is to use a stripper with indirect heating method such as reboiler
instead of that with direct injection of steam.

6. Optimization

The optimization basic idea is to combine water reuse and specifics treatments in order
to reduce water consumption per crude oil refined. The quality of water necessary for each
process and the maximum tolerable concentration of contaminants associated with
mathematical tools allow the water network optimization. For the case study, different
alternatives of possible arrangements and treatment technologies are explored considering
contaminants like salts, organics, sulfur and ammonia. The basic configuration is the usual
one, which consists of use fresh water and end-of-pipe treatment. The proposed alternatives
are schemes where wastewaters are allocated to reuse/recycling and according to quality of
water necessary for the receiver process they could be regenerated. In this case end-of-pipe
and decentralized treatments are considered.
The objective function of the model consists of minimizing the amount of water
consumption and/or the minimum wastewater treatment capacity with minimum annual cost.
The results show that the relationship between regeneration and fresh water costs, as the
concentration of some pollutants after treatments, is the determinant factor for operation
viability. The ideal situation is to reach the “almost zero liquid discharge”. This aim is
expected in the alternative that reuse and decentralized regeneration are utilized (Bagajewicz,
2000).

7. Conclusions

For several reasons, oil refineries need to optimize their water network system. A good
management of refinery water system besides considering the water used in the production
process should also includes the water used at utilities plant (cooling towers and steam
generation) and general purposes (human uses, fire fighting and services).
The water/wastewater minimization techniques involve environmental benefits since
they can effectively reduce overall fresh water demand and the overall effluent generated,
resulting in lower costs of fresh water and effluent treatment. As a consequence of the
strategy employed, the industry saves money, gains community trust and shows sensitivity to
the environment.

8. References

Alves, R. M. B.; Guardani, R.; Bresciani, A. E; NASCIMENTO, L.; NASCIMENTO, C. A.

O. Water reuse: a successful almost zero discharge case. 16th European Symposium on
Computer Aided Process Engineering and 9th International Symposium on Process Systems
Engineering, (Computer Aided Chemical Engineering), 2006.

Bagajewicz, M. A review of recent design procedures for water networks in refineries

and process plants. Computer and Chemical Engineering, 24, p. 2093 – 2113, 2000.

Bagajewicz, M.; Koppol, A. Zero Liquid Discharge: Cost, Uncertainty and Risk in the
Design of Water Reuse Systems. AIChE Annual Meeting, 2001.

Diepolder, P. Is “zero dischsrges”realistic? Hydrocarbon Processing, 71 (10), 129, 1992.

Foo, D. C. Y. A State-of-the-art Review of Pinch Analysis Techniques for Water

Network Synthesis. Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research, 48(11), 5125-5159,
2009.

Goldblatt, M. E.; Eble, K. S.; Feathers J. E. Zero Discharge: What, Why and How.
Chemical Engineering Progress, 89(4), 22, 1993.
 Koppol, A. P. R.; Bagajewicz, M.; Dericks, B. J.; Savelski, M. On Zero Water Discharge
Solutions in the Process Industry. Advances in Environmental Research, 8(2), p. 151 – 171,
2003.

Rosain, R. M. Reusing Water in CPI Plants. Chemical Engineering Progress, 89 (4), 28-35,
1993

Smith, R. Chemical Process Design and Integration. John Wiley and Sons, 2005.

Takama, N.; Kuriyama, T.; Shiroko, K.; Umeda, T. Optimal water allocation in a
petroleum refinery. Computers & Chemical Engineering, 4, p. 251–258, 1980.

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