Abstract
Early production in oil fields can cause problems related to oil specifications in the existing process unit, especially in the stabilization tower. This study aims to improve the performance of a crude oil treatment unit for an Iranian oil field. The process involves a two-stage desalting unit followed by a stabilizer tower. First, the desalting process was modeled using the population balance equation in MATLAB. Then, the whole process was simulated by linking the numerical code and simulator. The effective parameters of the desalting process were determined by sensitivity analysis. In this research, the desalting and stabilization units were simultaneously optimized due to the existing interactions between the desalters and the stabilizer tower. The goal is to maximize the oil production, optimizing the variables of pressure drop of the mixing valves, electric field intensity, wash water flow rate of the first and second desalters, and the operating temperature of the first desalter. The maximum allowable salt and water contents in the oil entering the stabilizer are 10 PTB and 0.1 %, respectively, considered as optimization constraints. Optimizing the whole process by Genetic Algorithm, the oil production increased by 413 bbl/d (0.68 %) compared to the existing condition.
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