Calcium Removal for the Opportunity Crude Using the Deritives of Pyrurvic Acid

Due to the growth limitation of light crude oil production, refinery companies are showing interest in heavy crude oil containing the high contents of S, Ca, organic acids, and metals. The market price of heavy crude oil is much lower than that of light crude oil and the discount rate depend on the impurity contents (averagely 10 ~ 25%). Thus, as increasing the handling capacity of heavy crude oil, economic feasibility improved.

Ca is one of the major impurities in heavy oils, occurring several problems during the refining processes such as fouling in pipe systems and heat exchangers and the deactivation of catalyst. Calcium naphthenate (CaNA), combined with the Ca cation and the anion of naphthenic acids, is difficult to remove because of complex and various molecular structures of naphthenic acids.

In this study, calcium removal from opportunity crude oil was conducted using the deritives of pyruvic acid. The effect of operating variables on the Ca removal efficiency was experimentally studied using Bottle test method. The Ca concentration and water content in the oil samples were analysed using inductively coupled plasma (ICP) and Karl-Fisher method, respectively.