Investigation into the Distribution of Erosion-Corrosion in the Furnace Tubes of Oil Refineries

Abstract

Crude oil is one of the most important sources of energy in the world. To extract its multiple components, we need oil refineries. Refineries consist of multiple parts, including heat exchangers, furnaces, and others. It is known that one of the initial operations in the refineries is the process of gradually raising the temperature of crude oil to 370 degrees centigrade or higher. Hence, in this investigation the focus is on the furnaces and the corrosion in their tubes. The investigation was accomplished by reading the thickness of the tubes for the period from 2008 to 2020 with a test in every two year, had passed from their introduction into the work. Where the thickness of more than one point was measured on each tube in the same row and the corrosion rate was extracted for three furnaces, starting from the area of ​​heat transfer by radiation to the heat transfer area of ​​the convection in three different operating units. It was found that the highest percentage corrosion value between the standard tube thickness and the thickness of conduction position was 37% with the conduction zone, and 31% with radiation zone. There, the tubes specification was tested. Five percent Cr-0.5 Moly and the temperature of radiation zone was 578 °C to 613 °C and the stack temperature was 410 °C to 450 °C. So, the results show that the maximum erosion occur at the convection zone.