TRENDS IN LIMITING CORROSION PROCESSES AND CONTROLLING OF NAPHTHENIC ACIDS CORROSION IN THE PETROLEUM REFINING INDUSTRY.

The trend of depletion of light crude oils processed by the refineries in the world, intensive research began into the possibility of extracting and safely processing economically more profitable, but problematic heavy oils already during the end of the last century. For more than 30 years, forecasts and analyses of the risks in the processing of opportunity crude oils have been published in a number of articles. Scientists have described in detail the real possible difficulties in mixing and desalinising these types of oils, contamination of equipment during their processing and the high risk of corrosion. The opportunity or the alternative crude oils are known for their high content of sulphur, light organic acids, naphthenic acids, which are highly aggressive and corrosiviness in the high-temperature parts of atmospheric and vacuum distillation units. Today, there are standards that determine the preventive events to ensure the reliability of the equipment in the long term. Some of them include: the choice of crude oils, the correct selection of construction materials when building new or renovating old refineries, adequate inspection techniques, modern monitoring and control systems, software products for predicting the risks when mixing and processing different crude oils are observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]