Organic Amine Partitioning at Simulated Refinery Overhead Condition

摘要

Organic amines, a neutralizer, are preferentially used over ammonia to minimize the amine hydrochloride induced corrosion in refinery overhead systems. The partition of active ingredients of the neutralizers to the hydrocarbon phase reduces the efficiency of neutralizing amines as the maximum amount of amines are required to be in the aqueous phase to deal with hydrochloric acid present in the system. Moreover, the partitioning of amines to the hydrocarbon phase can form corresponding amine chloride salts leading to the under deposit corrosion in the refinery units. In the present investigation, the authors selected eight organic amines, commonly used in the refinery industry, for the partitioning study. The paper will highlight the partitioning experimental setup at simulated refinery crude distillation unit overhead operating conditions. In addition to partitioning experiment, this topic will describe the development of a test procedure using high performance liquid chromatography in combination with a chemiluminescent nitrogen detector to determine the concentration of each organic amine partitioning to hydrocarbon phase. It was found that cyclohexylamine was the most hydrophobic amine whereas ethylene diamine was the most hydrophilic amine out of all the investigated amines under the simulated refinery overhead condition.