Study of the Fouling of Preheaters in the Southern Crude Processing Unit (UTBS)’S of Hassi Messaoud

Fouling of heat exchangers is an important problem faced by industries in particular the oil industry. Indeed, fouling is an expensive phenomenon that increases energy losses, leads to a significant decline in production, and leads to a high maintenance cost. The detection of this latter can be very quick using calculation methods that evaluate the effectiveness of the heat exchanger through the global heat transfer coefficient; these methods require very specific operating conditions. The present study concerns the monitoring over time of the fouling resistance in heat exchangers of two preheating trains (10 and 30). The latter are located in the Southern crude processing unit (UTBS) of Hassi-Messaoud in Algeria. These exchangers are intended to heat unstabilized oil with stabilized oil. The results show that these exchangers are fouled, which required their cleaning.