Crude oil produced from oil wells cannot be considered as goods suitable for domestic and international trade. In the first place, crude oil needs to be cleaned of impurities and handled in a certain way. Therefore preparation of oil for processing becomes a very important task.
Oil production technology provides for use of oil wells from which a mixture of hydrocarbons consisting of oil itself, associated petroleum gas, mineralized water and mechanical impurities is obtained. Extracted crude material is collected from all oil wells scattered over the entire production territory for further oil preparation for processing which provides for division (treatment) of the raw hydrocarbons into merchantable oil, petroleum gas and formation water.
In addition, an oil treatment plant provides for such processes as merchantable oil metering, associated gas metering and utilization, pumping merchantable oil to piping.
All impurities (formation water, minerals salts, associated gas, etc.) prevent oil from being transported, stored and processed in a normal manner. Therefore, the purpose of preparatory work is to bring this material to due condition by chopping off whatever is unnecessary.
The basics of oil production provide for preliminary treatment of extracted raw material before its pumping to the main pipeline transmission system.
Engineering Solutions offers services relating to development and design of oil preparation technology, utilization of by-products obtained as a result of treatment and separation processes as well as to fabrication and delivery of either separate process units or entire treatment cycle on a turnkey basis.
During preparation of oil for processing the following operations need to be obligatorily completed: material demineralization and dehydration, removal of gases dissolved in oil and crude material stabilization.
The following equipment is used in the oil treatment plant: inlet devices for improvement of technical processes which are called mixers, oil, water and gas treatment units, oil and water settlers, terminal separation units, process packaged units, oil metering units, agent transfer pumps, storage vessels and tanks, safety systems and fire-fighting equipment.
The oil treatment plant may consist of the following equipment:
- inlet manifold unit;
- oil and gas separators;
- line oil (well products) heaters;
- oil and gas separators with water discharge arrangement;
- oil dewatering and desalting unit;
- terminal separation units;
- formation water treatment apparatuses;
- gas separators;
- oil pumping unit;
- formation water pumping unit;
- associated gas flow measurement and control unit;
- oil custody (intra-entity) metering unit;
- high- and low-pressure flare units;
- buffer vessels;
- drain vessels;
- emergency tanks.