About oil refinery process:

An oil refinery or petroleum refinery plant is an industrial process plant where crude oil is transformed and refined into useful products such as petroleum naphtha, gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas, jet fuel and fuel oils.

Why choose air-cooled heat exchangers for oil refinery process?

One of the most frequently used equipments during this refinery process is heat exchangers. Among all the types, the air-cooled heat exchangers are second only to shell-and-tube heat exchangers in chemical and petroleum processing operations. These equipments are used to cool and/or condense process streams with ambient air as the cooling medium instead of water.

Cooling or condensing with ambient air has both economical and environment-friendly advantages, especially in arid or semi-arid areas where the water resources is insufficient or available water requires extensive treatment to reduce fouling, or when additional investment would otherwise be required to expand a plant's existing cooling-water supply.

Although the construction cost of an air-cooled heat exchanger is higher, the operating cost is significantly lower compared with a water-cooled exchanger. Using ambient air as cooling medium also eliminates the fouling and corrosion problems associated with cooling water, and avoids the possibility of leakage and mixing of water with the process fluid. Thus, maintenance costs for air-cooled heat exchangers are generally lower than other types.

The structure of an air-cooled heat exchanger for oil refinery:

Fluids flow direction in an air-cooled heat exchanger:

The tubes of the air-cooler are often fitted with aluminum fins. On the air side of the tube, the heat transfer surface is enhanced by fins which are designed to increase the surface area of the tube and improve thermal performance.

Usually there are four types of finned tubes that are most commonly adopted.

· 'L' Finned tubes

· 'LL' Finned tubes

· 'KL' Finned tubes

· 'Extruded' Finned tubes

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