The aim in fig 7-8 is to show tower arrangements, and hence condensers,coolers,exchangers,etc, are not

shown.
Tooper crude oil must always be stripped with steam to improve its flash point or to recorver the last
partions of gas oil.
The composition of the topped crude oil is primarily a function of the flash or vaporizer temperature,
and hence fig 7-9 is a good approximation of topped crude oils from all normal-boiling-range crude oils.
The destillation curves are entirely adequate for computing the amount of stripping steam required.
HE and combination plants.
The number of heat exchangers that may be wisely untilized depens upon the quantities and
temperatures of the several products.
Heat exchangers are often expected to pay for themselves in 2 years but the general situation is
presented in fig 23-5.
In complete plants, which conduct vacuum and cracking operations as well as the topping of crude oils,
the crude oil ,ay be advantageously heated by products from these other units because they are at a
relatively high temperature.
For example ( fig7-10), the crude oil may be pumped through the condenser exchangers of the topping
plant, throught the condenser exchangers and side-product exchangers of a vacuum plant, throught the
bottoms exchangers of a cracking plant,and finally back to the topping tower.
In some plants a crude oil temperature of to 650 F is attained by heat exchange alone.
Figure 7-10 is an attempt to indicate the main sources of heat in an exchanger system.
In isolated topping plants,exchangers are also used on the side-draw products of the topping plant.
In general, it is usually economical to bring the crude oil to within 40F of the temperature of the hottest
heat exchange stock that is available. In deciding which stocks to employ for heat exchange the product,
of the percentage of material based on crude oil times is temperature may be computed; and, if the
index is larger than about 5,000, the exchanger is economical.
In applying this method the quantity of stocks that condense should be multiplied again by 2 (or more).
Although such an extensive use of heat exchange appears to be advantageous, such systems are not
without disadvantages.
The dependency of several s units upon one anotheris a serious complication.
Thus is one unit must be shut down, the other units or units must be shut down or operated in a
crippled condition.

Sometimes these plants are constructed with extra heating equipment so that any one of the plants can
be operated independently,but the extra heaters cost almost as much as if they had been originally
provided instead of exchangers.
Exchangers may also be a source of great expense unless they are wisely chosen and the stocks are clean
and noncorrosive.
In the extreme,exchangers could be untilized on every tray of a fractionating tower as well as on each of
the productsand perhaps succeed in attaining a thermal efficiency of 60 to 80 per cent.
One such system succeeded in operating without condensers.
The real merit of such a system, however, depends upon the cost of installing and maintaining the heat
exchangers, and it is doubtful if such a system is economically feasible in view of the low cost of heat in
most refineries.
Extra trays would also be required in a fractionating tower employing such a large amount of heat
exchange because the tower would operate with very little reflux.
Even after a complete use of heat exchange some products will go to the water coolers at 250 to 400F.
These stocks along with the hotflue gases from the pipestill or other heater may be used to generate
steam in what is known as awaste-heat boiler.
Such an installation is generalized in fig 7-11.
Feed water that has already been preheated with exhaust steam in an economizer is heated further by
any suitable hot oil stock that is on the way to storoge (or water coolers) and is introduced into a steam
drum.
Meanwhile, hot water is circulated from the drum through tubes that are heated by flue gases.
High temperature gases from a cracking still, thermal polymerizationstill, catalyst burn-off still, gas
reversion still,etc, are suitable.
Waste-heat boilers would appear to be a source of free steam.
Actually they require two or three times as much surface as a regular boiler, and hence they are seldom
economically feasible.
Pressure-still distillate.
In thermally cracking stocks from high-sulfur crude oils, the cracked distillate contains large amounts of
sulfur and no means of significantly reducing the sulfur content except acid treating has been
devised(but catalytic hydrogenation may soon be used).
After acid treatment, the distillate is still a bright-yellow-colored material

Although part of coloring material is high boiling and may be separated by distillation, some of it
decomposes if a high temperature is uses and causes discoloration of the distillate.
Gumlike materials are also produced at high temperatures.
These difficulties are apparently caused by the decomposition and hydrolysis of alkyl sulfates which are
produced during acid treatment.
The excat temperature below which discoloration and the formation of gum occur depends upon the
chemical nature of the distillate, the manner in which the chemical treatment was conducted, and the
way in which heat is applied.
With one particular distillate, the effect of increasing the steam which is used to reduce the temperature
,other conditions and operations being the same, was as follows
(per cent steam in overhead)
Refiners usually limit the temperature of redistillation in continuous pipestill and fractionators plants to
325F by the use of steam, although some plants have been operated at 375F.
The tendency has been to decrease the temperature because the treating operation is much simplified if
the temperature is low.
Several companies have installed vacuum systems in which temperature is limited to 275F.
The vacuum redistillation systems are usually of the two-stage type, in which part of the distillate is
distillad at atmospheric pressure and the heavier part is vaporized in a second fractionator which
operates at a reduced pressure.
7-2 analyses or unstablilized pressure distillates ( volume pereentage analyses of pressure distillates
collected at pressures of psi)
Stabilization
Cracked gasoline, crude oil, wild natural gasoline, and similar stocks contain dissolved gaseous
hydrocarbons that tend to escape during storage.
Analysis of crude oils were shown in table 4-5, and table 7-2 by burket indicates the composition of
cracked distillates.
The equipments used for the removal and gaseous or very low-boiling materials are all fundamentally
similar to the natural-gasolline stabilizer, show in fig 7-12.
Heat is supplied at the bottom of the tower by means of a steam-heated reboiler; and, if the feed is
heated by heat exchange with the stabilized gasoline, the feed need not be otherwise heated. An
effective separation of propane requires the use of a large number fractionating p;ates(fig 7-12 shows
plates than necessary) and a somewhat high reflux ratio.

The fractionation of pressure distillate is conducted in a manner similar in a respects to the stabilization
of raw natural gasoline(fig 7-12)
However, pressure distillate contains less propane and butane than raw natural gasoline, and hence the
feed must be heated to ahigher temperature.
Pressure distillate is often deep stabilized for the removal of substantially all the four-carbon-atom
and lighter hydrocarbons so that the stabilizer overhead will contain all the defins that are suitable for
polymerization.
The propane rejected from the polymerization unit may be collected as bottle gas, and the butanes are
collected and returned to the plant gasoline for increasing its vapor pressure.
Recent development of polymerization, dehydrogenation, alkylation,etc, processes, which are now
practiced primarily on gaseous hydrocarbons, all require high-pressure fractionators similar to
stabilizers.
In most of the conversion processes it is necessary to produce pure hydrocarbons, and hence such
elaborate systems as that shown in fig 7-13 are widely used.
This plant was use primarily for making an isobutene butane feed for polymerization units, but during
world war ll all the products became use full.
In the separation of pure hydrocarbons the stabilizers or fractionators are referred to as
deethanizers,debutanizers,deisobutanizers,etc, depending upon the hydrocarbon that is being
removed.
The gas recovery and stabilization operations of a refinery may be centralized into a single system, as
indicated in fig 7-14.
The stabilization of cracked gasoline is not shown because cracked and straight-run gasolines are not
usually mixed during processing.
Reboilers.
In fractionating two-component feed stocks a part of sometimes all of the heat input is supplied at the
bottom of the fractionators.
In such systems the part of the column below the feed, viz, the exhausting section, effects some
separation.
The lower part of most petroleum oil columns does not function as a fractionators but as a simple
steam-striping section.
In practicing reboilingon heavy-oil towers, oil is circulated from the bottom of the power, through a few
tubes in the pipestill or other heating equipment, and back into one of the lower plates of the tower as
in fig 7-15.

Reboilers do increase the efficiency of fractionation,but satisfactory degree of separation can usually be
obtained more cheaply by the use of a stripping section.
The use of two coils in a pipestill is difficult because the exact heat input in each coil cannot be
accuratelydetermined except by experiments with the pipestill during operation.
Reboilers heated by steam are used in stabilizer towers for natural gasoline,pressure, distillate, butanepropanemixtures, and some solvents.
In these cases the bottoms product must be well fractionated, whereas in most of the processes that
have been discussed heretofore the fractionation of the overhead product was most important.
Practionators for the production of special cuts, such as solvents, are frequently operated with reboilers
or with fired shells at the bottom of the towers.
Naphthas and specialty products.
The manufacture of solvents is an exacting operation not only of the short boiling range but because the
color must be excellent and stable with respect to light.
Only straight-run or highly treated stocks can be used for the manufacture of solvents.
In small refineries in which shipments of solvents may not exceed a tank car per month, a common
method of processing is to withdraw a small quantity of roughly cut material from the main distillation
process and rerun this cut in a shellstill and tower, using a large quantity of reflux and conducting the
distillation very slowly.
A product that is withdrawrom the side of a multiple-draw column can never be well fractionated.
It will always contain some low-boiling material because the vapor that passes the draw plate always
contains the lighter products of the process.
The end point can be regulated to some extent by the use of many plates and large amounts of reflux,
but a satisfactory initial boiling point cannot be abtained by these methods.
Regulation of the initial boiling point is usually accomplished by the use of a steam stripper.
However, these common methods are ordinarily not satisfactory for the manufacture of solvents, and it
is usually necessary to withdraw a partly fractionated material from the main tower and redistill this
material under controlled conditions.
Pressed distillate and bright stock solution
The redistillation of pressed distillate in the manufacture of neutral oils must be conducted under
vacuum or with the use of large amounts of steam.
In other respects the equipment and method of operation are similar to those used in topping crude oil.

Discoloration will result in a high treating cost,and hence the pipestill must be built with a large amount
of radiant surface and for high oil velocities.
The same equipment may be used to redistill bright stock solution; but, of course, a different quantity of
material will be processed.
The unit is being accumulated in storage tanks.
One small Pennsylvania refiner stored bright stock solution for about 3 weeks out of the mounth and
processed it during the fourth week in the topping plant.
It was reported that only 1 hr was required to switch from the crude oil charging stock to bright stock
solution as the charging stock.
Bright stock solution,like pressed distillate, must be distilled with as little discoloration as possible.
Several two-flash systems have been built.
In the first flash, the naphtha is removed.
The residue is then further heated in a part of the pipestill, and gas oil and a neutral oil are vaporized in
the second flash.
The two flash system holds no important advantages over the single-flash system, but as an illustration
the two-flash method of operation is shown in fig 7-18.
The steam required is an pipestill rerun system isoften less than one-fifth the amount required by
shellstill redistilation.
Modern practice is tending toward single-rather than two-flash systems.
Reducing operations.
Reducing is a term used to describe those distillation operations by which a topped crude oil is further
distilled to leave behind a very high-boiling residue or to produce additional distilled products.
Steam reduction involves heating to 550 t0 660F in the presence of large amounts of steam.
In early refinery practice cylinder stock was exposed to steam in shellstills for many hours.
Modern practice simply involves the use of steam in large amounts in a countinuous distillation system.