Allied Technology

Product Announcement
www.alliedtechnology.com

Allied Technology Announces Innovative Horizontal Heater Separator Design that Dramatically Saves Setup Costs and Improves Separation.
John W. Ferris, Product Application and Sales Manager for Titan Tanks & Vessels, said For several decades, wehave developed and fine tuned some very unique and efficient internal designs for separators, line heaters and treaters at our facility in Elmore City, OK. Working closely with our customers, we were able to be very creative to overcome the common flow, poor separation, choke freeze and fast wear issues seen on standard vessels sold by our competition. We combined into one single Horizontal Heater Separator the equivalent of 3 standard vessels and eliminated the additional cost of labor and material of the piping associated with the three unit setup. Traditional Separation The production of separate streams of oil, water and gas from a crude mix coming out of a well can be achieved with the use of vertical and horizontal vessels, sized and designed internally according to process requirements. The most commonly used well head separation setups consist of: > 2 or 3 phase vertical separators, to split the fluid into oil, water and gas phases, > A line heater to preheat the choke and keep the well running during cold weather, > A vertical treater that separates more precisely the oil from the water with heat to make the oil ready for pipeline. Allied Technology offers a wide range of multi-phase separators that fits this traditional set up: > Custom design engineered for your specific operating conditions > Many in-stock standard designs available for diverse ranges of conditions. The Innovative Horizontal Heater Separator Allied Technology is also offering an innovative Horizontal Heater Separator (HHS) that combines the three commonly used vessels (separator, heater and treater) into one single vessel, resulting in significant cost savings and greatly reduced setup times. Because of the innovative positioning of the fire tube in the HHS, it takes the role of a line heater (by preventing the choke from freezing), of a 250# or 500# gravity separator and of a treater. Large oil volumes are effectively treated in horizontal vessels that have a heated fire tube section followed by an inert section, to separate the water from the crude oil by gravity. One advantage of horizontal over vertical treaters is the large fire tubes, which are installed in the end of the vessel and provide significantly greater heat distribution, with the result of higher separation efficiency, and consequently much higher oil processing capacity. The basic premise of the common treater design is to optimize gravity separation of immiscible water by Stokes Law. This is done first by heating the crude in order to increase the gravity differential, and to reduce the viscosity and then by using gravity for separation. The Allied Technology HHS design is more efficient than common treaters first in the way the heat disperses with the use of our innovative fire tube positioning. In addition, the larger separation chambers on the end of the vessel are optimized for the best separation with the heat. Finally, we offer the ability to easily fine tune the different levels inside the vessel according to the well output with a simple manual adjustment. Our HHS also has features not available on the market: Allied Technology is the only company offering a removable gas section, instead of a gas dome. With our removable gas section, it is possible to clean the mist pads inside it, should they be packed with paraffin or other impurities.

Allied Technology

Product Announcement
www.alliedtechnology.com

In addition, the gas that comes out of the HHS gas section is hot, and due to the internal design of the gas section, the impurities are left behind by gravity, offering a cleaner gas to the pipelines. This is what makes the HHS a great and cheaper alternative to gas units in lower pressure pipeline cases. Finally, Allied Technology offers a more durable design by using an innovative way of internally re-directing the flow of fluid in such a way that the wear issues are greatly reduced, making the HHS last longer than the competitions standard separators. Should the fire tube deteriorate with time, it is easily removable and replaceable in our unique design so the customer does not have to purchase a complete new vessel as it is often the case with standard treater designs. HHS vs Gas Units In certain applications, the HHS can efficiently take the place of a gas unit at a much lower cost. The HHS willbe a better solution compared to any gas units for pipeline pressures below 500 psi (currently our limit due to ASME design limitations). A conventional gas unit is a combination of a line heater and of a small horizontal separator. The size of the horizontal gravity separator will cause a significant flow restriction (choke point) due to the fact that the flow needs to be reduced to offer more time for the oil and water to separate inside the vessel as the surface area of separation is small. The HHS is a much larger vessel by design and will allow much more flow due to a significant larger separation surface area. Secondly, the line heater in a gas unit is separated from the separator vessel and only used to keep the choke thawed, so the heat is not being used to improve the separation of the fluid as it is done in the HHS. To summarize, the HHS is offering a more efficient oil/water/gas separation than a gas unit because of the combination of a larger surface area of separation and an improved heat distribution inside the fluid mix, and this increase in efficiency translates into a decrease in flow restriction. Because of the internal technological advantages described above, the HHS removes the flow restrictions found in units that commonly choke the well production. The use of the HHS will be less costly and will allow a higher well production. HHS and Setup Cost Savings When installing the Allied Technology HHS on site, the combination of 3 vessels into 1 simplifies the setup process and reduces the amount of fittings, valves, and pipes, therefore reducing the opportunities for errors and oil spills. Overall the savings noticed by our customers are very significant and we would be more than happy to be given the opportunity to estimate such cost savings for your applications.
2009 Allied Technology | info@alliedtechnology.com Figure 3: Conventional separation setup with line heater, a 2 phase or 3 phase gravity separator and a treater (in red) Figure 4: Innovative HHS setup with the heater, separator and treater combined into 1 vessel at much lower cost (in green) Figure 1: Conventional gas unit with choke heater (heater coil in yellow, gas in red) separate from small gravity separator (water in blue, oil in green) Figure 2: Standard Horizontal Heater Separator (HHS). The heating coil inside the vessel and the larger surface area improves the separation of water (blue), oil (green) and gas (red) while keeping the choke thawed