Applied Thermal Engineering 73 (2014) 1204e1210

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Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Energy optimization of crude oil distillation using different designs of

pre-flash drums
Mohmmad A. Al-Mayyahi a, b, *, Andrew F.A. Hoadley b, G.P. Rangaiah c
a
Department of Petrochemical Engineering, Technical College, Basrah 61001, Iraq
b
Department of Chemical Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia
c
Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117585, Singapore

h i g h l i g h t s

Single & multiple pre-flash designs of the crude distillation unit are studied.

The trade-off between CO2 emissions and the residue yield has been investigated.

Multi-objective optimization was used to find the trade-off solutions.

Introducing crude pre-flashing reduces the total CO2 emissions.

Optimum vapour feed location has been investigated.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) is among the major CO2 emitters in any petroleum refinery. In view of
Received 6 January 2014 the simultaneous increase in the energy cost and environmental concerns, there is strong motivation to
Accepted 8 September 2014 analyse alternative methods to improve the energy efficiency and consequently, to minimize CO2
Available online 16 September 2014
emissions from conventional crude distillation. Crude pre-flashing is among promising techniques for
minimizing the heating energy requirements of the CDU. However, this might be at the cost of product
Keywords:
yield and/or throughput. This paper investigates the effects of using different pre-flash designs on the
Oil refining
energy efficiency and associated CO2 emissions of the CDU. The resulting optimal solutions are presented
Crude distillation unit
Pre-flash design
and their significant features are discussed.
Heat integration © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Multi-objective optimization
CO2 emissions

1. Introduction
The continual increase in the global energy demand and the
decline in fossil fuel reserves provide motivation for energy con-
servation in energy-intensive industrial processes. Different
methods are used to improve energy efficiency of industrial pro-
cesses such as the implementation of less energy-intensive tech-
nologies and the use of waste heat recovery systems. The Crude
Distillation Unit (CDU) is among the largest energy consumers and
consequently a large CO2 emitters in industrial processes. It is
estimated that the energy required for the CDU is equivalent to
* Corresponding author. Department of Petrochemical Engineering, Technical
College, Basrah 61001, Iraq. Tel.: þ964 7722748739.
E-mail addresses: moh1973may@gmail.com, muh_petro@yahoo.com
(M.A. Al-Mayyahi), Andrew.Hoadley@monash.edu (A.F.A. Hoadley), chegpr@
nus.edu.sg (G.P. Rangaiah).
about 2% of the energy contained in the crude oil [1]. For this
reason, many attempts have been made over the years to analyse
and improve the energy efficiency of the CDU and to identify
promising modifications based on pinch analysis and heat recovery
systems [2e6].
Crude pre-flashing is one of the promising energy conservation
methods, which can save a notable amount of energy within the
CDU. The basic principle of crude pre-flashing is to separate the
light fractions of the crude upstream of the furnace. Then, the light
fractions stream obtained is either mixed with the furnace outlet or
separately introduced into the main column at an appropriate
location. This could improve the hydraulic performance of the
furnace and reduce its energy consumption [7,8].
In the literature, research studies have been conducted to
investigate the effect of the implementation of crude pre-flashing
on the energy efficiency of the CDU using different retrofit strate-
gies. Feintuch et al. found that the implementation of a pre-flash

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2014.09.024
1359-4311/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 M.A. Al-Mayyahi et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 73 (2014) 1204e1210
drum before the desalter is a cost effective solution to increase the
energy recovery in the heat exchangers downstream of the furnace
[8]. The implementation of different pre-flash schemes and energy
saving opportunities were studied by Ji and Bagajewicz [9]. A step
by step optimization procedure based on the heat demand-supply
diagram was used to target the energy consumption of the CDU
under the maximum distillate yield conditions. They explained the
carrier-effect of the light fractions of the crude and its importance
in improving the separation of the gasoil fraction. In another work
[10], the same authors studied the effects of the pre-flashing on the
main column system integrated with the vacuum column. They
found that only a small reduction in the energy requirements of the
whole system can be obtained with the pre-flash unit.
Later, Yahyaabadi found that heating and cooling utility con-
sumptions are not considerably affected by the location of the pre-
flash device [11]. However, he concluded that additional savings on
the operating costs can be obtained by introduction of the crude
preflashing. Errico et al. compared different pre-flash devices for
energy savings within an industrial crude distillation [12]. The pre-
flash devices were compared from both energy and economic
perspectives. It was found that the energy savings that can be ob-
tained from the implementation of the pre-flash drum are related
to a reduction in the light distillate and an increase in the middle
distillate. On the other hand, the implementation of the pre-flash
column results in a high increase of the light distillate but only
smaller energy savings in the furnace duty can be obtained
compared to those of the pre-flash drum configuration. Recently,
Luyben optimized the design of a pre-flash column before the CDU,
for reducing energy costs [13]. He investigated the main optimi-
zation variables including the pre-flash column pressure, reflux-
drum temperature, and furnace outlet temperature.
The previous studies show that the introduction of the crude
pre-flash improves the hydraulic performance of the furnace and
reduces its energy consumption. Consequently, the reduction in the
energy consumption of the furnace will lead to a reduction in total
CO2 emissions. However, the implementation of the crude pre-flash
requires more capital investment which may impact the profit-
ability of the plant. Furthermore, the energy saving obtained by
implementing a crude pre-flash scheme is related to a reduction in
the light distillate yield, which is generally undesirable. When one
Vent
Water
Water
Crude oil Desalter
Preflash Drum
Fig. 1. The process flow diagram of the crude distillation unit.
1205
objective (energy saving) is compromised by another objective
(distillate yield), a single optimal solution may not be obtained. An
alternative approach is to use Multi-Objective Optimisation (MOO)
which examines both objectives simultaneously. This is the
approach taken in this study to investigate optimization of the CDU
pre-flash for minimizing both the residue yield (an economic
objective) and total CO2 emissions (an economic and environ-
mental objective).
2. Overview of the crude distillation unit
The CDU is the first and the major fractionation unit in any re-
finery. It is used to separate crude oil into a number of petroleum
cuts of different boiling point ranges. The atmospheric and vacuum
distillation units are used to separate the lighter fractions (distil-
lates) from the crude oil. Fig. 1 shows a typical process flow diagram
of the atmospheric distillation unit. Firstly, the crude oil from
storage tanks is preheated by a series of heat exchangers. A desalter
is installed in the heat exchangers train to reduce the salt content of
the crude by an electric desalting process. The incoming crude oil is
heated up to 120  C and mixed with water before it is fed to the
Desalter. The desalted crude is then heated to about 200  C; if a pre-
flash vessel is used, it is usually installed at around this tempera-
ture. The pre-flash vessel separates vapour from the liquid feed-
stock, thus reducing the vapour pressure of the crude [14]. The
liquid from the pre-flash vessel is then heated to the maximum
possible temperature (typically between 200 and 280  C) through
heat exchangers, and then sent to an atmospheric fired heater to
achieve the required fractionation temperature of approximately
400  C (which varies with crude type) before entering the flash
zone of the column where the lighter hydrocarbons separate due to
the sudden increase in the volume of the column [14]. Usually, the
vapour from the pre-flash vessel is either fed into the flash zone of
the column or introduced at a higher location of the column where
the end points of the flashed vapour and internal liquid are close.
Naphtha is produced as a vapour and condensed by the over-
head condensers (Fig. 1). Kerosene, diesel, and atmospheric gas oil
(AGO) are withdrawn as side streams and further refined using side
columns, which are either reboiled or use stripping steam, to
reduce the content of the lighter components in each product.
Offgas
Water
Vapour
Naphtha
PA1
Steam
Kerosene
PA2
Steam
Diesel
PA3
Steam
AGO
Steam
to the vacuum tower
Furnace Residue
Furnace
Atmospheric Tower
1206 M.A. Al-Mayyahi et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 73 (2014) 1204e1210
These products are sent for processing in downstream units to in-
crease the value of final products whilst the atmospheric residue is
further heated and distilled under vacuum conditions to achieve
the required separation among the heavy components at lower
temperatures.
3. Crude pre-flashing
One of the primary purposes of the crude pre-flash is to reduce
the operating pressure of the main furnace of the CDU by sepa-
rating light vapours from the pre-heated crude. Pre-flashing can
also help in reducing the furnace duty and decreasing the vapour
load in the atmospheric column [13]. However, implementing
crude pre-flash may have implications on the performance of the
CDU, such as a reduction in the yield and quality of the distillate
products [12]. The impact of the crude pre-flash on the CDU de-
pends on many factors such as the type of the pre-flash, its location
in the crude preheat train and the feed location of flashed vapour in
the main column.
It has been found that the best location for the crude pre-flash is
after the desalter in order to reduce the water content of the crude
which may cause corrosion in the following devices [8,12,14]. Two
main types of pre-flash devices are normally used in the industry:
pre-flash drums and pre-flash towers or pre-fractionators. Pre-flash
drums are simple vessels used to separate light vapours from the
crude before the furnace. Then, the separated vapours are sent
directly to the distillation column. The vapour feed location is a
function of many factors such as the temperature and compositions
of the vapour stream and operating philosophy [12]. Pre-flash
drums are usually used to increase the capacity of the CDU by
reducing the vapour load on the bottom section of the distillation
column. On the other hand, pre-fractionators are used to achieve
more effective separation and improve specifications of the distil-
lates. Vapours produced from the pre-fractionator are not sent to
the distillation column [9].
The efficiency of crude pre-flashing can be improved by using
multiple pre-flashing where multiple pre-flash drums can be used
at different temperatures and pressures. Various vapour streams of
different compositions are produced and sent to different tray lo-
cations in the distillation column. The present work investigates
the implications of using crude pre-flashing on the environmental
performance of the CDU. Both single and multiple pre-flashing are
considered, and different vapour feed locations in the atmospheric
column are examined.
V1
D1
Desalter crude F1
D2
F2
Fig. 2. Simulation of flash drums.
Aspen HYSYS® simulator is used to simulate the CDU including the
crude pre-flash unit. Based on the literature, the best location to install
the pre-flash drum is directly after the desalter [8,12,14]. To simulate the
multi pre-flash drums, the desalted crude is pumped through a heat
exchanger to heat it up then sent to the first flash drum into which the
crude is separated into vapour and liquid phases, Fig. 2. The vapour from
the first pre-flash is sent to the distillation column at a certain tray based
on the vapour compositions. The bottom liquid stream from the first
pre-flash is further heated up before sending it to the next flash drum.
This design was used for all flash drums, see Fig. 2. The vapour fraction
(V/F) for each flash drum is manipulated to turn the flash drum on and
off. Any flash drum can be turned off by setting the (V/F) of the flash
drum to zero.
4. Multi-objective optimization
Often, optimization of real problems have two or more objec-
tives. Many of these objectives such as profit, safety, and emissions
cannot be represented by a single objective function. Also, these
objectives are often conflicting, and so consideration of the trade-
off is essential leading to a set of optimal (non-dominated) solu-
tions. These so called “Pareto-optimal solutions” provide better
insight into the process, for decision making. MOO has been
implemented for studying many chemical process operations
including the CDU [15]. Inamdar et al. [16] used MOO to simulta-
neously optimize the selected conflicting objectives associated with
an industrial CDU. Recently, Al-Mayyahi et al. [2] investigated the
trade-off between operating revenue and CO2 emissions from the
CDU using a blend of two crudes.
As has been previously mentioned, the implementation of a
crude pre-flash system would cause conflicting impacts on some
objectives of the CDU such as energy consumption and product
yields. Therefore, these conflicting impacts can be evaluated using
MOO and an optimized, trade-off solution can be found. In the
present study, the elitist non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm
(NSGA-II) implemented in Excel™ [17] is employed to investigate
the effects of crude pre-flashing on the economic and environ-
mental performance of the CDU. NSGA-II is an upgraded version of
an optimization algorithm, and uses a special ranking criterion to
classify solutions into different non-dominated fronts. In the Excel
implementation of NSGA-II, potential solutions (represented by
decision variables) are encoded numerically using binary encoding;
see Ref. [17] for more details on the Excel-based NSGA-II.
to tray 4
to tray 8
V2
to tray 16
V3
to tray 21
V4
D3
F3
D4
F4
to the furnace
 M.A. Al-Mayyahi et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 73 (2014) 1204e1210 1207

Table 1 44
Decision variables and their bounds.

Variable Units Lower bound Upper bound 42

MS kg mol/h 10 1000

FT C 340 380 40

Residue yield (vol %)

(V/F)1 vol/vol 0 2 or 4a
(V/F)2 vol/vol 0 1
(V/F)3 vol/vol 0 1 38 without pre-flashing
(V/F)4 vol/vol 0 1
a with pre-flashing
2 for multiple pre-flash and 4 for single pre-flash cases. 36

34
5. Case studies

In the present study, Arab light crude is used as a feedstock to
the CDU unit. Information of the crude oil assay can be found
elsewhere [18]. The atmospheric column consists of 29 trays, a total
condenser, three side strippers and three pump-around circuits. A
naphtha product is produced overhead, whilst kerosene, diesel and
atmospheric gas oil (AGO) are produced from the three side strip-
pers. All side strippers are ‘steam stripped’ where steam is injected
into the strippers to remove light components.
Three different cases are considered wherein the residue yield is
minimized (which corresponds to maximizing the total yield of the
distillates), as an economic objective, while minimizing the total
CO2 emissions (the environmental objective). Different emission
sources (furnaces, electrical energy, and steam) were considered in
the calculation of CO2 emissions. It is estimated based on energy
integration using pinch analysis to reduce the emissions that are
incurred as a consequence of using different utilities. Six decision
variables are allowed to vary within a realistic range to achieve
optimum values for the objectives. These variables are: the flowrate
of the main stripping steam (MS), the furnace outlet temperature
(FT) and the volume fraction of the vapour from each of four pre-
flash drums (V/F). The decision variables and their bounds are
summarized in Table 1. The objective functions are optimized
subject to relevant constraints (Table 2). The temperature limits of
the fractions on the ASTM D86 curve, which are called Cut Points,
are used to define the boiling range of fractions whilst the overlap
between adjacent fractions (so called Gap) is used to define the
degree of separation between two adjacent fractions. The Gap is
commonly represented by the difference between the boiling
temperature of 5% ASTM of heavy fraction and boiling temperature
of 95% ASTM of light fractions. The gaps between the D86 95% and
5% cut points are used as quality constraints. The D86 95% cut
points of naphtha, kerosene and diesel are used as active specifi-
cations in the CDU simulation. They were held constant at 182, 271
and 327  C respectively, to ensure that each product meets a basic
composition specification. Another active specification is used to
maintain the internal reflux (overflash) between first tray above the
flash zone and flash zone. The overflash is held constant at 2% to
prevent the dry out of the trays below the AGO withdrawal tray.
The CO2 emissions of the CDU are estimated based on energy
integration using pinch analysis. Energy integration is used to
32
30
41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48
CO2 emissions (t/h)
Fig. 3. Pareto-optimal solutions of case study-1.
enhance energy recovery within the system and reduce heating
requirements. Consequently, the emissions that are incurred as a
consequence of using these utilities will be minimized [2]. Furnaces
are the major energy consumers in the atmospheric and vacuum
distillation units [19]. The impact of higher residue yields on the
combined atmospheric and vacuum distillation system is consid-
ered by including the vacuum distillation unit (VDU) furnace in
both the total energy demand and the CO2 emissions objective
functions.
In the first case study, the optimum results of the CDU without a
pre-flash is compared with the one having a pre-flash, where the
pre-flashed vapour is fed to tray 4 (counted from the top with
condenser being zero). The multiple pre-flashing is investigated in
the second case study where four pre-flash drums are used. The
vapour from the four pre-flashes are assumed to be equivalent to
the main four products; naphtha, diesel, kerosene and AGO
respectively. The four vapour streams (except for the first vapour
stream) are introduced above the side stream of the equivalent
product namely tray 4, 8, 16 and 21, respectively to avoid product
contamination [20]. The third case study investigates the optimum
vapour feed location by comparing the results from the previous
two case studies with the results of feeding all vapour streams to
the bottom tray of the column.
The optimal values of the column design specifications are
calculated based on 85% flooding limit and valve trays. Suitable
values of computational parameters in the NSGA-II algorithm were

Table 2
Constraints in the optimization problem.

Constraint Specification

Keroseneenaphtha (5e95) gap 16.7  C

Dieselekerosene (5e95) gap 0  C
AGOediesel (5e95) gap 11  C
Naphtha D86 95% 181  C
Kerosene D86 95% 271  C
Diesel D86 95% 327  C
Overflash 2% vol
Fig. 4. CC at minimum CO2 emissions.
1208 M.A. Al-Mayyahi et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 73 (2014) 1204e1210

450
400
350
300
250
T (o C)

200 without pre-flashing

with pre-flashing
150
100
50
0
0 50 100 150 200
H (MW)
Fig. 6. The change in the total CO2 emissions for multiple pre-flash design.
Fig. 5. GCC at minimum CO2 emissions.

At minimum CO2 emissions, the consumption of the main strip-

previously determined [2]. These parameters and their values are:
random number seed ¼ 0.857, crossover probability ¼ 0.8, muta-
tion probability ¼ 0.05 and population size ¼ 50. Around 200
generations are required to obtain a smooth set of Pareto-optimal
solutions.
5.1. Effect of crude pre-flashing
Fig. 3 shows the Pareto-optimal results of the CDU in the pres-
ence and absence of a crude pre-flash in one single flash drum. The
results show at high residue yield, the crude pre-flash significantly
decreases the total CO2 emissions of the CDU. However, at low
residue yield, no benefit can be seen of using the crude pre-flash.
This is because maximum vapour rates are required in order to
maximise distillation efficiency.
Fig. 4 compares the composite curves (CC) of the CDU at mini-
mum CO2 emissions before and after the addition of a pre-flash
drum. The slope of the hot and cold CCs represents the reciprocal
of heat capacity flowrate (MCp) of hot and cold streams, respec-
tively. Fig. 4 shows that the introduction of the pre-flash drum in-
creases the slope of the cold CC above the pinch point, because
removing the vapour from the preheated crude reduces the crude
flowrate (M in MCp) after the pre-flash drum. On the other hand,
the hot CC shifts horizontally to the left above the pinch point;
however, its slope remains constant. Fig. 5 shows the change in the
grand composite curves (GCC) of the CDU at minimum CO2 emis-
sions after adding the pre-flash drum. The results are taken at the
same residue yield for the sake of comparison. The GCCs of the two
cases show a decrease of 8.7 MW (or 5.5%) in the minimum heating
duty, QHmin (Table 3). However, Fig. 5 indicates that the pinch point
temperature is not affected. In short, the introduction of pre-flash
will have very limited effects on the heat exchanger network.
Table 3
ping steam (MS) was minimized, whilst maximizing the pre-flashed
vapour (V/F). On the other hand, maximum steam must be used for
minimum residue, if no pre-flash is allowed (Table 3). In addition,
with pre-flash, it is necessary to operate at the maximum furnace
outlet temperature (FT) in order to achieve the required overflash
specification. However, when there is no pre-flash, a lower temper-
ature can be used due to the high amount of the light vapour in the
feed. The high residue yield associated with a high pre-flash fraction
can be attributed to the loss of the carrier effect of the light vapours in
the main feed stream, as explained by Ji and Bagajewicz [9].
HYSYS tray sizing utility was used to compare different me-
chanical designs of the distillation column. Table 3 shows that
design for minimum residue yield requires a higher column
diameter (Dmax) than the minimum CO2 emissions cases, because of
the high amount of vapour flowing inside the column. Furthermore,
the crude pre-flash reduces Dmax of the atmospheric column.
Introducing all vapour streams into the column at the same tray
may cause hydrodynamic problems such as increasing the flooding
factor, and the significant reduction in the vapour load below the
vapour feed location may lead to a lower separation efficiency in
this section. Both these effects may be countered by changing the
type of tray or packing.
5.2. Effect of multiple pre-flashing
The effect of using multiple pre-flash drums on the reduction in
the total CO2 emissions is studied in Fig. 6. Up to four pre-flash
44
42
40
Residue yield (vol %)

4 pre-flash drums
Comparison of the optimum results of the CDU with and without pre-flash.
38 single pre-flash drum
Minimum CO2 emissions Minimum residue yield

Without With Without With 36

pre-flash pre-flash pre-flash pre-flash

CO2 (t/h) 44.3 41.9 47.0 47.0 34

Residue yield (vol%) 40.4 40.4 30.9 30.9
MS (kg mol/h) 29.4 112.6 1000 998
FT ( C) 360 380 380 380 32
(V/F) (vol/vol) e 3.43 e 0.0
QHmin (MW) 163.7 155 167 166.7 30
FQ (MW) 108.7 107.3 116.5 116.2 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48
HPS (MW) 35.1 30.5 32.1 32.1
CO2 emissions (t/h)
MPS (MW) 19.9 17.2 18.4 18.4
Dmax (m) 8.2 7.9 9.3 9.3
Fig. 7. Pareto-optimal solutions of case study-2.
 M.A. Al-Mayyahi et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 73 (2014) 1204e1210 1209

Table 4 44
Optimum results of multiple pre-flash drum case at minimum CO2.

Minimum CO2 Minimum residue yield 42

4 pre-flash drums-bottom feeding
CO2 (t/h) 41.5 47.0
Residue yield (vol%) 40.4 30.9 40 4 pre-flash drums-top feeding

Residue yield (vol %)

MS (kg mol/h) 160 989
FT ( C) 380 380 4 pre-flash drums-1st bottom feeding
(V/F)1 (vol/vol) 1.9 0.0 38
(V/F)2 (vol/vol) 0.73 0.0 single pre-flash drum-top feeding
(V/F)3 (vol/vol) 0.68 0.0
36
(V/F)4 (vol/vol) 1 0.0 single pre-flash drum-bottom feeding
QHmin (MW) 154.5 166.3
FQ (MW) 109.8 116.4 34
HPS (MW) 28.7 32.0
MPS (MW) 15.9 17.9
Dmax (m) 7.3 9.1 32

drums in series are used upstream of the furnace. The four vapour
streams produced from the four pre-flash drums are fed to tray 4, 8,
16 and 21. Fig. 6 shows that the minimum CO2 emissions of the CDU
reduces as the number of pre-flashes increases. However, after 2
pre-flashes, the reduction in the CO2 emissions tends to be negli-
gible. Fig. 7 compares the Pareto-optimal solutions of the single
pre-flash of Case study 1 and the multiple pre-flash case with four
pre-flash drums. For the residue yield of greater than 34%, the latter
case yields a slight reduction in the minimum CO2 emissions from
the single pre-flash case due to the slight reduction in the mini-
mum heating duty; see Tables 3 and 4. However, for residue yields
below this value, the two Pareto-optimal curves are identical.
Similar to the single pre-flash, maximum furnace outlet tempera-
ture is required to achieve the 2% overflash specification.
The GCCs of the single and multiple pre-flashing cases have
almost the same trend which shows the slight effects of the mul-
tiple pre-flash on the heating/cooling demands of the CDU
compared to the single pre-flash drum (Fig. 8). Besides the slight
improvement of the multiple pre-flashing over the single pre-
flashing regarding the reduction in the total CO2 emissions, intro-
ducing the flashed vapour streams into different trays reduces Dmax
which will reduce the flooding problem and increase the column
throughput (see Table 4). At minimum residue yield, the loads on all
pre-flash drums are negligible and therefore, the results are nearly
identical to the previous case study with no pre-flashing.
5.3. Effect of vapour feed location
The feed location of the flashed vapour is an important
parameter in the pre-flash design. As previously mentioned, the
vapour is usually fed either to the flash zone or to the tray where
450
400
350
30
41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48
CO2 emissions (t/h)
Fig. 9. Pareto-optimal solutions of case study-3.
the end points of the flashed vapour nearly match the internal
liquid compositions. This case study compares two vapour feed
locations: above and below the flash zone. In the latter option, the
flashed vapour is fed to the bottom tray of the column (one tray
below the main feed location).
Fig. 9 compares the Pareto-optimal solutions of different cases
considering different vapour feed locations for single and multiple
pre-flash designs. In the figures, bottom feeding refers to the case of
introducing all vapour streams into the bottom tray ‘one tray just
below the flash zone’. Top feeding refers to introducing vapour
streams into different trays above the flash zone ‘based on the end
points of each vapour stream’. One additional case is considered,
where only the vapour from the first flash drum is introduced into
the bottom tray whilst other vapour streams from the remaining
flash drums are introduced into the above-flash zone trays. The
latter case is referred to as ‘1st bottom feeding’ in Fig. 9. The results
show that using the bottom tray as the only vapour feed location
(bottom feeding curves in Fig. 9) records higher CO2 emissions with
a slight improvement in the multiple pre-flash designs over the
single pre-flash. On the other hand, sending the flashed vapour to
trays above the flash zone (top feeding curves in Fig. 9) reduces the
total CO2 emissions of the CDU with a slight preference for the
multiple pre-flash design as shown in Case study 2. However, the
decrease in the CO2 emissions is accompanied by a significant in-
crease in the residue yield as shown in Fig. 9 which can be
Table 5
Comparison of the optimum results for different vapour feeding locations.
Single 4 pre-flash drums 4 pre-flash drums
pre-flash drum (bottom feeding) (1st e bottom feeding)
(bottom feeding)

300 CO2 (t/h) 43 42.6 41.6

Residue 38.5 38.5 38.5
250
T (o C)

yield (vol%)
200 4 pre-flash drums MS (kg mol/h) 10 10 12
single pre-flash drum FT ( C) 371 371 380
150 (V/F)1 (vol/vol) 3.2 2 1.5
100 (V/F)2 (vol/vol) e 0.5 1
(V/F)3 (vol/vol) e 0.57 1
50 (V/F)4 (vol/vol) e 0.46 1
0 QHmin (MW) 163.4 164 158.5
0 50 100 150 200 FQ (MW) 118.7 123 116.2
HPS (MW) 29.4 27 28.5
H (MW)
MPS (MW) 15.3 13.8 13.8
Dmax (m) 8.2 8.2 7.9
Fig. 8. GCC at minimum CO2.
1210 M.A. Al-Mayyahi et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 73 (2014) 1204e1210

450 FQ furnace duty, MW

400 FT furnace outlet temperature,  C
GCC grand composite curve
350
HPS high pressure steam, MW
300 MOO multi-objective optimization
250
T (oC)

MPS medium pressure steam, MW

200 4 pre-flash drums-bottom feeding MS flowrate of the main stripping steam, kg mol/h
NSGA-II a binary coded elitist non-dominated sorting genetic
150
1st pre-flash drum-bottom feeding algorithm
100 PA pump around circuit
50 QHmin minimum heat duty, MW
0 V vapour volumetric flowrate from each pre-flash drum
0 50 100 150 200
H (MW)

Fig. 10. GCC at minimum CO2 emissions. References

attributed to the drastic decrease in the carrier-effect of the main
crude feed [9]. The negative effect of the absence of the light va-
pours in the crude feed can be mitigated by sending part of the
flashed vapour, preferably from the first pre-flash drum, to the
bottom tray. The results show that, compared to the multiple pre-
flashing with top feeding, a decrease of 1.5% in the residue yield
can be achieved if the vapour of the first pre-flash drum is sent to
the bottom tray (see Table 5). Furthermore, a slight improvement in
the CO2 emissions can be obtained. For the same residue yield,
Table 5 shows that feeding the first pre-flash vapour to the bottom
tray requires a lower Dmax than the other two cases. The GCCs in
Fig. 10 show that by sending only the first pre-flash vapour to the
bottom tray slightly decreases the heating and cooling duty
required, compared with sending all the vapour to the bottom tray.
6. Conclusions
Multi-objective optimization was used to investigate the effects
of crude pre-flash on the energy savings and the corresponding CO2
emissions of the CDU. A binary coded genetic algorithm, NSGA-II
implemented in Excel, was used along with a rigorous and
comprehensive CDU model. The introduction of crude pre-flash has
shown a noticeable reduction in the CO2 emissions of the CDU,
especially at high residue yields. However, at low residue yields, the
results show no advantage of using a crude pre-flash process. In
addition, it has been shown that introducing the light vapour from
the first pre-flash drum into the bottom tray can further reduce the
CO2 emissions for the same residue yield.
Nomenclature
AGO atmospheric gas oil
CDU crude distillation unit
D flash drum
Dmax maximum column diameter, m
F feed volumetric flowrate to flash drum
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