A Review on Crude Oil Fouling and Mitigation Methods in Pre-heat Trains of Iranian Oil Refineries

Crude oil fouling of the equipment surfaces is a troublesome issue which leads to operating difficulties, economic penalties, increased environmental impacts, and health and safety hazards in petroleum industry. With a rough estimation, a minimum cost of equal to 4 million barrels of oil/year is required to be invested to offset the costs of crude oil fouling in Preheat Trains of Iranian oil refineries. Considering the price of each oil barrel equal to 50$, crude oil fouling cost is predicted to be 200 million$/year. Additionally, burning extra fuel leads to emission of a great portion of CO2, which is associated with a highly negative environmental and economic impacts. Therefore, crude oil fouling mitigation methods such as controlling the operating conditions, utilizing additives, and surface modification techniques have received a great deal of attention. Surface modification in terms of modification of its geometry and texture and/or surface energy can help mitigate fouling to a large extent.