Desanding of FWKO and Treater

[soma0324]

I have started working on a project that involve desanding of the FWKO and Treater system. I have never worked on such system before although I am quite familiar with treater operation and design and also worked with some FWKO. mostly i work in the gas side. so any comments where can i find information or literature about such operation. our client told us that treater is working at 130 C and during the desanding operation the desanding water will be 91 C which will cooldown the treater and treater outlet oil may go off spec. they are looking for a solution to this problem as well. i think 91 C water is already quite hot as it is coming from a skim tank and i dont think we can heat this water more because skim tank is an atmospheric tank not a pressurized vessel. so i am looking for the solution to this problem. also if some one knows or have some link or any reading material on desanding operation of vessels. please help me. just to let you let you guys know these vessels are AKER vessels and already equippid with desanding pan and nozzels.
Thanks

 

[chief]

Desanding is part of the process in oilwell drilling operations. Cyclone separators are used to spin out the sand. They can be used in batches or a single large unit, Sizing of the unit is of course dependent on flow rates.

Offshore Engineering&Design

 

[soma0324]

in my case we are not using cyclone separators. it is the vessels with the inverted pan at the bottom and nozzels to inject high pressure water to remove sand from the bottom of the vessel. i need some material regarding this operation.

 

[Chacuncha]

If the sand is already accumulating in the vessels, use the mudwash system, where you open up the water and reverse wash the sand and sludge out then you settle it out and remove the sand. But I have never seen a FWKO or treater running at 130 deg C, this temperature will boil your light ends off? is this a heavy crude? very heavy? Normal 18 API crudes run at 3 bars at 85 deg C, 130 C is very high.

 

[FredExergy]

130°C is quite feasible for a FWKO treating bitumen emulsion. The pressure will be a few bar g. To get the desand water from your skim tanks into the FWKO you will probably have to pump it anyway which gives you the opportunity to heat it up without it boiling, and thus reduce the impact on the FWKO temperature.

 

[soma0324]

yes it is very heavy crude i think 7 or 8 API gravity. i know there are is not much literature available on these kind of operations and most of the information is properitery anyways. however got some clues and now working on it. hopefully my design will work. if someone know any usefull link or any book that can help me understand the design.