Abstract

Intermediate light oil, such as naphtha and gas oil from either atmospheric distillation unit, fluid catalytic cracking unit or delayed coking unit, is usually temporarily stored in storage tanks for further processing. Nowadays, refineries prefer to purchase low-grade crudes due to financial concerns. Consequently, intermediate petroleum products bear increasingly more corrosives, for example organic and inorganic sulfides. Storage tanks for intermediate light oil suffer from severe corrosion in the last decade, and several tank incidents are attributed to the self-ignition of corrosion product. To establish the root cause and to prevent reoccurrence of incidents, experiments are carried on under simulated environment to understand corrosion characteristics of intermediate light oil in storage tank. Factors, such as sulfur content (both mercaptan and sulfide ion), chloride, water, temperature are investigated. The operational upper limit of sulfur for storage tank is set at 0.5wt% based on the experiment results.

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