Crude Stabilizers Water Wash

[askme]

For Oil crude stabilizers, I noticed they undergo water wash process once the column and associated HX performance degrade.

My question; Is water wash a common practice in industry and is there an alternative method for elongating the column performance performance like chemical cleaning and so on?

 

[hanon]

In crude Stabilizers it is not common to water wash: they can kkep on running quite well for all the cycle. However, in reformer stabilizers it is fairly common due to problem of salt deposition in the trays (NH4Cl(s))

 

[25362]

There is a patent by Betz that proposes to remove salts from fresh crude oil w/o the need of using fresh water which might interest you, see:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6159374.html