Investigation of Crude Oil Electrostatic Desalters Performance

Desalting Process is one of the most important steps of crude oil production plant in surface facilities andalso the first step of refinery units. Because of complex mechanism of this process, various aspects of theprocess still have been remained unknown. In this paper, it is attempted to obtain a more comprehensiveknowledge of its performance mechanism via introducing the various phenomena that happen in a crudeoil desalter. The fundamental principle of a crude oil desalter can be illustrated as the coalescence of smallwater droplets under the influence of an electrical field to form larger droplets that settle down more quickly.Furthermore, the influence of different operating conditions such as crude oil characteristics, temperature,electrical field strength, demulsifier concentration, and fresh water rate have been investigated using thegoverning equations in this phenomenon.