Empty Spray Section Results After Start-up: Heat Transfer and Also Fractionation

The Vacuum Tower of REFAP refinery, located at south of Brazil, was revamped with a too deep modification: packing were removed from the light gas oil pumparound and slop wax wash sections. At the same time the light gas oil x heavy gas oil fractionation section remained with the spray distributor and no internals, as an additional heavy gas oil pumparound section.

This tower started-up in February 2007 and has been working well since then.

A test run was performed in order to evaluate the light gas oil pumparound empty spray section. The influence of hot light gas oil reflux ratio in the separation quality of light gas oil x heavy gas oil was also observed at each step of the test.

The results of these plant tests are going to be presented in this paper.