IPTC-20219-MS

A Systematic Approach to Increase Banyu Urip Crude Oil

Dheli Panji Utama, Sutrisno Kaswan, and Syamsul Bahri, ExxonMobil Cepu Ltd

Copyright 2020, International Petroleum Technology Conference

This paper was prepared for presentation at the International Petroleum Technology Conference held in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, 13 – 15 January 2020.

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Abstract
Banyu Urip Facility which started up in 2015 was designed to process 185,000 BPD crude oil. Previous
studies indicated surface facilities were constrained compare to reservoir deliverability. Debottlenecking
activities including wash water injection into the production separator increased production 8% higher of
the design capacity. Recent plant capacity test confirmed additional cooling would be required to increase
production 19% higher than design capacity. Additional cooling capacity was installed downstream of the
Crude Oil Stripper which successfully increased production to the new higher crude production.
This paper will share the comprehensive assessment of increasing capacity of the Banyu Urip production
facilities including the additional cooling capacity and other facilities aspect affected by increasing crude
production. The additional crude cooling capacity was achieved by the installation of an air cooler; however,
the concept selection process also evaluated other brownfield constraintssuch as equipment spacing,
constructibility, demand on supporting utlities and safety systems.
Early screen was performed to identify the equipment area taking into account the impact to operability,
maintenability, and process performance. Due to the brownfield nature of the project the ideal location for
symetrical arrangement of the new equipment was not avaible, therefore a screening level hydraulic analysis
was require to validate the location was suitable for the process contidtions (i.e. pressure drop, velocity,
etc.). The final location proved to perform as designed by by delivering the required cooling to support the
increase capacity higher by 19% of design capacity.

Introduction
Banyu Utip Central Processing Facilities (CPF) is a hydrocarbon processing complex consist of Utility,
Crude Processing Unit, Gas Processing Unit and Crude Export system. It was designed to process 185,000
BPD of sour crude and further transportation to Floating Storage and Offloading (FSO) vessel via 92 km
pipeline. The CPF was started up in 2015 and then increased to higher production 8% higher than original
design in 2017.
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Facilities Overview
The CPF is designed to separate impurities and stabilize the crude. The impurities include produced
water, ascociated gas and H2S. The High Pressure (HP) and Low Pressure (LP) Production Separators
are utilized to separate the hydrocarbon in stages with some recycle streams required to maximize the
overall hydrocarbon recovery. The crude is further processed in the Dehydrator with electric static charge,
separating the small droplets of water. The Crude Oil Stripper strips off the H2S from the crude to reach the
required crude specification before shipping it via the pipeline to FSO.
One of the important processes during the separation-stabilization is the crude conditioning process where
the crude gets heated and cooled in exchangers around Crude Oil Stripper. The Crude Stripper Cooler
is the final piece of process equipment responsible for ensuring the crude export temperature meets the
specification upon arrival at the FSO. The CPF has two crude processing train where each trains has two
Crude Stripper Cooler bundles. The crude temperature is limited by the offtaking oil tanker temperature
limitations which cannot exceed 65° C during offloading.

Wash Water Operations – Direct Injection Cooling

A previous debottlencking effort to increase production of CPF plant (SPE-189264-MS) was completed by
performing direct injection cooling into LP Separator with wash water as the media. It was successfully
executed which increased the Banyu Urip crude production to up to 8% higher to the design capacity.
As described in the paper, wash water was considered the quickest and an innovative solution as it was
not requiring capital investment. By design, wash water will be utilized for crude desalting if later one
the produced water production increase. As shown in Figure 1, the wash water was injected to the LP
Production Separator and further separated further in the Crude Oil Dehydrator. The water was then pumped
by Dehydrator Water Transfer Pump to Liquid Return Manifold. This first debottlenecking also revealed
that the main obstacle to further increase production was crude cooling capacity to meet the offtaking
temperature specification.

Figure 1—Crude Processing Facilities

A reliability issue was identified on the Dehydrator Water Transfer Pump after the wash water system
was in operations for some time. The pump utilized progressive cavities pumps with an elastomer stator. The
sour water caused the elastomer-stator to expand and restrict the movement of pump's rotor causing it to jam.
IPTC-20219-MS 3

Swing Production Practice

Ambient temperature gives significant impact to the cooling performance due to the higher temperature
during the day (up to 39-40°C) as compared to night (~25° C). Swing production was implemented to
further optimize production through utilization of the cooler night time temperatures. Operations set up a
production planning program to adjust the crude flow from the well and set the outlet temperature at 75OC.
The following chart outline the swing production before and after wash water introduction which shows
that at night the crude production was higher in correlation to the ambient temperature.

Figure 2—Typical Crude Oil Swing Production Rate (SPE-189264-MS)

Initiative for Further Debottlenecking

After the first high rate test confirmed the capability of Banyu Urip facilities to produced higher, a study was
undertaken to comprehensively analyze the effort to provide additional cooling capacity to support crude
oil production further up to 19% higher than original design, excluding the dependency of wash water to
minimize pump reliability issues that would subsequently lead to crude production downtime.
The wash water operations was a simple and effective operation; however, the capacity was limited at 80
m3/hr. The new crude production target cannot be achieved through only wash water operations (see Table
1). The following table outlines the overall heat transfer coefficient (U) requirement which is higher than
the available U estimated. It indicates that cooler existing unit could not satisfy the expected new process
condition.

Table 1—Air Cooler Assessment (Individual Cooler Bundle)

A brownfield project has its own challenges as it needs to fit with the available spacing, align with current
operating condition and also to provide minimum disturbance during the execution phase. The concept
selection includes several screening processes in various aspects such as process related item (hydraulic,
heat balance, surge), constructability (new location, pipe routing, operation and maintenance access) and
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overall project timing. A detailed concept selection process was carried out to evaluate three (3) cooler
installation options including: cooler installation upstream of the crude tank in parallel or in series with the
existing units, and a single cooler installation downstream of the crude tank.
The concept selection considered several aspect includes constructability, process impact (including
cooling capacity), downtime requirement for tie in installation, and schedule. Constructibilty and process
impact took highest weighted factor since it is directly involved with the main project objective.

Assessment of Additional Crude Cooling Concept

The concept selection was carried out at early phase of the project involving various parties to get the
comprehensive inputs. The following simplified diagram showed the options considered to put additional
cooling into the system.

Figure 3—Simplified Diagram - Cooler Installation Option

The concept selection summary shown in the Table 2. Option 1 was selected as the most suitable
arrangement to add additional cooling capacity of crude, considering the schedule, downtime requirement
and process impact to the existing facilities.

Table 2—Concept Selection Summary

IPTC-20219-MS 5

Further assessment carried out focusing on the cooler placement and design based on the option 1. The
main concern is related to the warm air recirculation if the location and equipment arrangement are not
carefully assessed as describes:
- Consideration 1 : New Cooler location to existing air cooler
New air cooler location at lower elevation may impact the performance of existing air cooler the higher
elevation cooler (15m above ground) as described by Figure 4. As no available spacing above grade in the
existing facilities configuration, the project team decided to place the new air cooler away from any existing
cooler at higher elevation to avoid any detrimental effect of existing process. The location close to the
existing cooler was considered as non-feasible option. The decision was later supported by Computaional
Fluid Dynamic (CFD) modelling shows that no significant warm air dispersion into the existing cooler.

Figure 4—New Cooler Placement Consideration

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Figure 5—Hot Air Dispersion Prediction at Selected Location

- Consideration 2 : New air cooler spacing from one to another and height from the grade
API STD 661 clearly specifies the maximum air approach velocity of 3.6 m/s for force draft unit which
defines the minimum height of air cooler above grade and cooler arrangement for multiple bays. It will
allow the air cooler to perform without warm air circulation. The calculated minimum height of the new
cooler was 1.9 meters above grade.
Another CFD model was developed to assess the possibility of warm air recirculation of the new cooler
arrangement on top of specified by API STD 661. The modelling also took into account of the surrounding
equipment in place which may impact the air supply flowrate. The equipment around the new coolers
includes HP Production Separator, Test Separator and Pipe rack. The height assumption was 5 meters
considerint the maintainability access during operations. The figure 6 shows the worst case condition of air
approach velocity of assumed wind direction of north-west. There was still some regions that potentially
hit air approach velocity of 3.6 – 4.9 m/s understandably due to surrounding pipe rack and other process
IPTC-20219-MS 7

equipment. Further assessment at the air temperature profile of the new cooler as suggested in Figure 6
indicates no sign of warm air recirculation at that worst case condition. The cooler arrangement and height
above grade decided based on this case.

Figure 6—CFD Modelling – Air Approach Velocity

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Figure 7—CFD Modelling – New Cooler Location (North East Wind)

Process Simulation Development

A detail process simulation was carried out through out the crude heating and cooling system which includes
Feed-Bottom Heat Exchanger, Stripper Feed Heater, Crude Oil Stripper and Crude oil stripper cooler. A
comprehensive approach was required to ensure the behavior of the processing facilities at higher crude oil
rate and validate the correct size of new cooler. Additionally, with the space contrain at existing facilities
for installing new equipment, hydraulic limitation also needed to be assessed thoroughly in order to achieve
the ultimate goal of reaching 75°C at Crude Export product.
IPTC-20219-MS 9

Crude Conditioning
As shown in figure 3, the stripping process required certain temperature conditioning through Feed-Bottom
Heat Exchanger and Stripper Feed Heater. The crude is heated up by crude bottom product and Stripper
Feed Heater subsequenty to reach the expected temperature of 135-140°C. The crude stripper removes the
H2S to produce the sweet crude product. After cooled by Feed-Botom Heat Exchanger, the sweet crude then
cooled by Stripper Cooler to reach temperature of 75°C.
The simulation development of heat exchange process, includes the Feed-Bottom Heat Exchanger and
Stripper Feed Heater with the absence of wash water as shown in Table 3.

Table 3—Feed-Bottom Heat Exchanger Assessment

The overall heat exchanger and cooler analys as shown in table 3, table 4 and table 5 suggested that the
new arrangement will be sufficient for the new operating condition at higher rate. The crude temperature of
75°C target can be obtained with additional bay of cooler, copying from the existing cooler size. The higher
DP of tube side of Feed Bottom Heat Exchanger and Stripper Cooler were expected, however after thorough
review no significant concern was identified on both integrity wise and process requirement. There are some
minor operating parameters changes however it does not give significant impact to process performance.
Additionally, the wash water dependency can be removed.

Table 4—Crude Stripper Feed Heater

Table 5—New Air Cooler Assessment with Same Size

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Table 6—Operating Condition Comparison – Crude Processing

Piping Hydraulic
Piping hydraulic assessment was performed to achieve the crude production target, to meet both in term of
flowrate and temperature. The scope covered the Crude Strippers, pumping system up to the tankage and
crude export pump. Additional assessment invoving drag reducing agent (DRA) was included as part of
the pipeline surge analysis.
Hydraulic study of process piping is important considering the space availability for new piping
installation that result in non-simetrycal arrangement of cooler. The project team also expected that no
pump upgrades would be performed. In the other side, the simple flow control is expected to minimize the
operations intervention. A hydraulic simulation performed to understand the flow distribution without any
means of flow control device.

Figure 8—Simplified Diagram – Hydraulic Verification

IPTC-20219-MS 11

NPSHA Verification. NPSHA assessment was carried out to identify any operating envelope to be adjusted
to accommodate new higher flowrate. As the overall flowrate increased, NPSHA was estimated lower
compare to the design. The calculation was then compared to the pump NSPHR data to get the NPSH margin
of minimum 1 meter as shown in Table 7.

Table 7—Summary of NSPH Calculation

The calculation performed by performing such a variation of Crude Oil Stripper level and temperature.
It was obvious that temperature effect is significant in providing NPSHa to the system. An operating
envelop change order was initiated which include the Crude Oil Stripper liquid level Low Level Alarm and
temperature limit to maintain the NPSH margin.
Stripper Bottom Pump Performance. The performance of Stripper Bottom Pump was reviewed at higher
crude flowrate. The preference was to get 1 pump operating at a time to maintain the sparing philosophy
during normal operations. Figure 9 outlines the pump performance curve compare to predicted system curve
up to crude storage tank. The flowrate basis was 864 m3/hr (for one train) total crude production. The
Stripper Bottom Pump will be able to cover the new operating condition with some margin set up.

Figure 9—Stripper Bottom Pump Performance Curve

12 IPTC-20219-MS

Flowrate Distribution Prediction. Flow distribution assessment around new and existing air cooler was
perform to assess the proposed piping work routing. The new cooler piping is not symmetrical as described
in Figure 3 due to space and location constrain. The new piping work was designed with bigger diameter
to overcome the higher pressure drop issue due to longer routing. The additional new piping work length
relative to new cooler is ~ 150 meters. The predicted flowrate to the new cooler will be 28% of overall 3
coolers (the target 33%), however it was considered that the temperature target still can be achieved.

Figure 10—Pressure and Temperature Profile Pipe

Export Pipeline Hydraulic

Pipeline surge study was performed to analyze the maximum surge pressure inside the pipeline from Crude
Central Processing Facilities (CPF) to Floating Storage Offloading (FSO) with presence of Drag Reducing
Agent (DRA).
The model was run at steady state at +13% production rate with 3.3 ppm DRA injection at upstream
of CPF Pig Launcher (previous corrosion coupon location). As the data of DRA was relatively limited,
the empirical approach was performed with some field validation upon the higher crude production rate
achieved.
The result from steady state model was validated with actual operating data with deviation less than 4%
and used a basis to run the dynamic model at the expected new crude production. The drag reduction versus
DRA concentration was established by assuming similar default drag reduction profile as shown in Figure
11. The crude production profile was also built (Figure 12) as a basis for further assessment.
IPTC-20219-MS 13

Figure 11—Pressure and Temperature Profile Pipe

Figure 12—Crude Oil Production vs DRA Concentration

The steady state model at +19% crude production with 7 ppm DRA injection was then used to perform
ten (10) dynamic runs. The worst case condition for the dynamic run is shown in the Figure 14.
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Figure 13—Maximum Surge Pressure

The dynamic simulation shows by Figure 14, concluded that the maximum surge pressure did not exceed
the maximum allowable operating pressure (MAOP) at any point in the pipeline system for all scenarios
considered within the scope of work and the valve closure time was adequate to protect the network system
from surge pressure.
Vacuum is observed in onshore and offshore pipelines including the Mooring tower jumper hoses for all
the upset scenarios. Down surge could cause vacuum below the saturation vapour pressure of export crude in
pipeline system. Column separation occurs when pressure in a system drops below vapour pressure of fluid
in the pipeline at pipeline temperature. A vapour cavity forms in a small fraction of the pipe while the liquid
columns on either side of the pipe accelerate. Sudden collapse of the bubbles causes a spike in pressure.
The simulation predicted the maximum pressure caused by column separation in the pipeline is well
below the MAOP. The entire onshore and offshore pipeline (including the hoses) can withstand full vacuum
conditions therefore additional vacuum protection i not required for this pipeline system.
The existing pressure relief valves at CPF are adequate to protect the pipeline from exceeding maximum
allowable surge pressure.
1. PSV A/C set pressure at 7000 kPag and maximum relieving capacity is 372.7 m3/hr
2. PSV B set pressure at 7350 kPag and maximum relieving capacity is 381.9 m3/hr
3. The relief device is assumed to open after a delay time of 100 ms to account for the reaction time
of relief valve.

Result and Conclusion

A comprehensive approach for the new cooler installation which include the consideration of
constructability, existing process impact, new equipment performance and downtime requirement for
installation proven to be susccessful. The approach consided not only the installation of new equipment but
the impact to overall operations, ensuring the safe operation envelop can be achieved on top of production
increase.
The new air cooler was brought online in November 2018 and provided instantenous impact by lowering
the crude product temperature and removing the plant's dependency on wash water operations. The target
IPTC-20219-MS 15

crude production increased to 19% higher than original crude processing design could be achieved within
the design temperature operating confirming the cooler inlet flow was adequaetly distributed.
The comprehensive brownfield approach for this project and lessons learned be applicable for the large
majority of the future projects within the CPF or FSO.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank EMCL for the permission to publish this paper. In particular, the author
would like to thank Syamsul Bahri, Process Advisor for relentlessly providing guidance during the project
execution and paper development. Thank you for Sutrisno Kaswan my work partner for his insight and hard
work. EMCL Construction team, Junaedi, Agus Nurahmat, Ahsan S Joumlat and Sendi A Putra for their
construction excellent execution. Thank you to Lukman Tanzil, Maria Benedicta, Hendra Priadi and Brian
Matula as EMCL management for their support in development of this paper.

References
ExxonMobil Cepu Limited. 2011. Banyu Urip Project Facilities Design Basis
Anisa, P. R., Bahri, S. 2017. Innovative Solution to Increase Banyu Urip Production at Lower Cost. SPE Processing
System & Design. SPE-189264-MS
American Petroleum Institute. 2013. Petroleum, Petrochemical, and Natural Gas Induestries – Air Cooled Heat
Exchanger. Seventh Edition.