Crude oil is likely to contain mercury as pure or as compound e.g. dimethylmercury. I would like to know if somebody can provide level of mercury contamination of crude from different sources.
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03/07/2012
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Lindsay McRae, Pall Corporation, Lindsay_McRae@pall.com
Hg levels can vary quite a lot. A paper presented at XIV Refinery Technology meet in India in 2007 lists total Hg content in crudes from various regions as follows: California (Cymric) 30,000 ppb, Alberta 2-400 ppb, North Sea 2.5-9.3 ppb, Libya 0.1-12.2 ppb, West Africa 1.5-3-5 ppb and Angola 1.5-2.7 ppb. (Processing High Mercury Crudes - An Opportunity and a Challenge. Authors: Young, Carnell, Vasudeva. XIV Refinery Technology Meet, Kareela, 2007).
Crude Oil and hydrocarbon condensates from S.E. Asia and Northern Australia are also may contain Total Mercury in levels up to 50 ppb. Some crudes from Thailand in particular are reported to be high in Mercury with levels up to 400 ppb reported.
In several cases MRUs have been employed to remove Hg from Naphtha and LPG streams where Hg is of concern. Care should be taken to protect MRU guard beds from free water and also particulate matter fouling the MRU absorbent bed. High efficiency Liquid-Liquid Coalesers and Feed Filters have been sucessfully employed to protect MRU Gurard beds.
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19/06/2012
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Morgan Rodwell, Fluor Canada Limited, morgan.rodwell@fluor.com
Many crudes contain trace levels of many metals (V, Ni, Fe, Ar, Hg, etc). The specific levels depend on where the oil came from. Most crude assays made available by producers do not include details on metals other than V and Ni.
Some of the metals are not detectable in the raw crude, and can only normally be discerned based on their presence on spent catalyst, or analysis of ash from burning petroleum coke.
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19/06/2012
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keith bowers, B and B Consulting, kebowers47@gmail.com
If elemental mercury is ever found in crude oil, that means the metal entered the crude very recently and very close to the sample point. Mercury is very reactive and will quickly combine with sulfur compounds and many others typically present in crude oils.
In my some 40 years of experience in the oil and gas production and processing arenas, Organic and inorganic mercury compounds are SELDOM (Rarely) found in crude oils at concentrations high enough to be DETECTIBLE by any but the most sensitive analytical methods and equipment. Simply because mercury is so reactive with iron oxide and the many other oxides, sulfates, etc. in producing formations, well bore materials transportation, storage, and handling facilities, mercury, IF present at all as the crude leaves the formation pores, quickly reacts with and remains sequestered on the pipe walls, tank walls,etc. Very low fractional Parts per Billion might be found, but I have never heard of, much less personally experienced a crude oil 'containing mercury.'
Some natural gas producing operations DO yield trace levels of mercury--which concentrates during chilling to make LNG, and freezes in miniscule droplets on the costly brazed aluminum plate heat exchangers in that process, leading to failures. It has always been hotly debated whether the mercury was endemic to the formation,or the mercury is merely a contaminant inadvertently leaked into the gas vapor during production operations (from flow and pressure measuring instrumentation systems).
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19/06/2012
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Keng Chung, Well Resources Inc., kengchung@hotmail.com
Too sensitive to "advertise" this sort of information.
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