Veolia Water Technologies & Solutions

Integrated Solutions for Refining

Delivering operational calm to the refining industry

Refiners are expected to run a safe and reliable operation, but also need to maintain a competitive edge. Taking advantage of market changes and the various opportunity crude oils available in the market today, responding to shifting market demands for their products, and adopting technology advances enables profitable operation while complying with increasingly tight regulations. This can be a complex balancing act for refiners and Veolia is up to the challenge to help.

Let Veolia help manage the stress of uncertainty

Veolia's integrated solutions help you take on corrosion, fouling, contaminants and other challenges facing your water and process streams across the refinery. Out technological innovations enhance our well-established expertise, chemicals, and equipment to assess, predict, control, monitor and optimize - helping convert variability into stable dependable and safe operations. 

SafeZone* Expert Services

SafeZone crude overhead corrosion protection

Higher operational variability is an unfortunate result of increasing crude slate variation and tramp amine contamination. As operational variability increases, reduced crude unit reliability often results. The inability to adequately measure, quantify and visualize the impact of the various factors driving the variability, often forces a refiner to adopt a conservation approach to establishing safe operating envelopes. This can negatively impact a refinery's profitability. 

In response, Veolia has created a new corrosion measurement and optimization platform called "SafeZone". The SafeZone platform uses operational, chemical and mechanical data from an operating crude tower to provide both feedforward and feedback control information - in near real-time. SafeZone provides the next level of value for the dual goals of overhead mechanical reliability and operational flexibility.

SafeZone is a service that focuses on maintaining the reliability and integrity of the crude unit atmospheric tower overhead system while targeting to optimize operating variables for improved economic outcomes. The program uses operational, chemical, and mechanical measurements to:

  • Rigorously quantify the system salt and dew points while using both actual conditions and system variability.
  • Detect periods where salting has occurred and where prevailing conditions show salting is likely to occur again.
  • Identify salting root causes and drivers.
  • Advise an operating and design adjustments to move out of salting conditions to a "safe zone" within a constrained optimization scenario - to a level of detail not possible previously.
  • Predict the performance for future states of operation, based on historical data, specified unit constraints, and desired operating tactics and strategies. 

TrueSense* COMS

TrueSense crude overhead monitoring systems (COMS)

Crude unit overhead condensing systems are designed for a significant life expectancy. yet, the frequency of failures can be unacceptably high - the crude unit overhead exchangers are among the least reliable fixed equipment in many refineries. Actual system performance is highly variable and depends on configuration, crude slates, metallurgies, and a host of other unique TrueSense Crude Overhead Monitoring Systemproperties. 

Undetected random events can produce very high short-term corrosion. Traditional corrosion control measurement and treatment programs are designed to protect best against the strong acid attack of the overhead system. As operating conditions and crude contaminant shave changed over the year, salting-induced corrosion has overtaken acid attack as the most common form of crude overhead system corrosion failures. 

Veolia's TrueSense COMS is an economical and efficient technology that continuously monitors, applied and optimizes the delivery of specialty chemical products injected into the overhead system for corrosion control. TrueSense COMS continuously measure H, and when appropriate can include chloride analysis, using a skid-mounted, turnkey unit. The COMS unit also accepts signals from corrosion probes installed in the system. These measurements are used to control overhead corrosion control treatment programs - neutralizers, filmers, and caustic - providing 24/7 measurement and protection. This greatly increases system control and reduces the impact of random events as compared to traditional spot-checking and manual injection control systems. 

CrudePLUS* Expert Services

Crude oil fingerprinting & advanced predictive analytics

As oil extraction techniques improve, new oil sources are brought on-linTechnologist using CrudePLUS machinee, existing field's oil properties change over time, and blending strategies become more aggressive in both the transport and refining of crude oils, a different approach is needed to determine the potential impact on the refining process. 

Veolia's CrudePLUS provides on-the-spot testing and impact quantification - coupled with recommended mitigation - allowing a refinery to safely expand their operating envelope. Combining the system's simulation and optimization capabilities with the optional and economic limits provided by the customer, CrudePLUS provides objective recommendations to:

  • Reduce blended feed instability
  • Identify desalter upset situations
  • Reduce fouling of exchangers and furnaces
  • Identify the precipitation potential within specified limits
  • Optimize crude oil blending to minimize processing issues while maintaining crude flexibility.

Steamate* LSA

Steamate* LSA boiler treatment

Steamate LSA is a steam/boiler treatment program designed to provide optimum refinery process and steam system corrosion protection. This integrated solution for refining was developed in a collaborative effort from Veolia's boiler, process engineering, and research teams. Steamate LSA has proven to better protect the critical utility/process assets in a refinery while potentially unlocking profits by not restricting crude unit operations.   

The Steamate LSA program utilizes 'low-salting potential' amines that minimize the potential for corrosive amine-chloride salt formation in crude unit distillation. Steamate LSA formulations most often contain Veolia Polyamine, a volatile, film-forming chemistry that protects the entire steam system from a single feed point. The added protection from Polyamine chemistry limits the need for traditional neutralizing amines, which can be expensive and undesired in the refinery process system. 

There are many reliability and economic benefits for Steamate LSA users, including: 

  • Reduce amine-chloride fouling and corrosion potential
  • Operation at lower atmospheric distillation temperatures enable maximum distillate production 
  • Reduce steam system corrosion and boiler deposition
  • Improve boiler feedwater corrosion, particularly where deaeration is not optimal
  • Reduce satellite amine feeds
  • Improve reboiler protection 
  • Reduce steam trap maintenance
  • Reduce flow assisted corrosion
  • Improve condenser and exchanger efficiency 

Refiners know that ability to make quick, data-driven decisions are the key to ensuring an operational calm, reliability, profitability, and confidence, but this isn't always easy to achieve. At Veolia, we're helping customers safely push the operating envelope by being able to monitor plant performance, uncover risks and opportunities and predict outcomes - all with the goal of optimizing refinery operations.