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Can we route stripped sour water to a cooling water circuit?
 
Answers
18/04/2021 A: Sudhakara Babu Marpudi, Dangote Oil Refinery Company, m_sudhakarababu@yahoo.com
Can’t agree more with people who said stripped water will contain traces of H2S, lots of Ammonia etc, constituents that could be harmful for cooling water quality. I am yet to see strict quality specs for stripped sour water. Uncontrolled pH makes stripped sour water not suitable for even desalting water.
26/11/2020 A: Jake Gotham, InSite Technical Services, jake.gotham@insitetechnical.com
You have a few responses already regarding the chemistry at steady state. You should also think about what happens in the event of a sour water stripper upset. If the stripping steam/reboiler stops you’ll quickly have a significant deviation in the cooling water chemistry and an environmental excursion. A typical cooling water circuit is predominantly a closed loop with a small make-up and bleed. Given the small make-up requirement, is there much incentive to use stripped sour water? Many refineries reuse stripped sour water in other applications. Desalter wash water, hydroprocessing reactor effluent air cooler water wash, crude unit overhead water wash are all examples. Consideration of chemistry and contaminants will be important in these too, but they are likely to be more tolerant of brief SWS upsets.
17/11/2020 A: Dipankar Phukan, Indian Oil Corporation, dipankarphukan79@yahoo.com
Yes you can. But if the sour water is from a hydrotreater, it will contain high ammonia, which is not desirable. Oil and gas should be ideally below 5 ppm or as-per your cooling water treatment programme design parameters. Both these contaminants are detrimental as far as corrosion and fouling is concerned in the cooling water circuit.
12/11/2020 A: Jerome Dufour, Nalco Water, jdufour@ecolab.com
Reuse of process water is always a challenge, especially when this water contains corrosive species such as sulphides. We invite you to reach out to Ecolab SMEs via our website to better understand the concerns and work on a pretreatment.
09/11/2020 A: Morgan Rodwell, Fluor Canada Limited, morgan.rodwell@fluor.com
I wouldn't do that. Stripped sour water still contains H2S and NH3, and may contain other species that are corrosive/toxic,, like HCN or HCOOH, that could cause problems in the cooling water circuit.