Overview
ARBOK-Desalting removes water and salt from marketable crude at ambient temperature under deep vacuum, replacing the electrostatic desalter at the front of a refinery. Where the classical unit heats crude to elevated temperature, injects fresh wash water and a continuous demulsifier, and returns a salty effluent to the wastewater plant, ARBOK-Desalting evaporates the water and drops the salt out dry. No wash water, no chemistry, no liquid concentrate. Because the process needs no heat, the unit sits on the tank farm on cold crude upstream of the atmospheric unit rather than inside the preheat train — which means a tie-in without a plant turnaround.
Applications
Primary use cases: crude dehydration and desalting at refinery tank farms; field treating stations and gathering batteries; crude quality correction before pipeline custody transfer.
Outputs/uses: dry desalted crude; recovered light fractions and gas; dry industrial salt; clean water.
Industries and users: refiners (20 000–50 000 bbl/d segment is the natural entry), crude midstream, upstream operators with BS&W or salt penalties.
Scale: 150–200 t/day per module; linear scale-up by module replication.
Operating Principle
Under deep vacuum (deep vacuum) water and hydrocarbon fractions pass into vapour without heat input. No heat is supplied from outside, there is no separate heating circuit, and no process temperature setpoint is defined — the process temperature equals the temperature of the incoming stream and of the ambient environment. Water evaporates and condenses as distillate; dissolved chlorides become a dry solid; light fractions and gas are drawn off as separate streams; a multi-valve separator removes the solid phase and brine. No catalysts, membranes, reagents or consumables. No liquid concentrate leaves the unit.
Because marketable crude carries only a few per cent water, the evaporation duty is small: at 0.5 % BS&W a cubic metre of crude holds 4.2 kg of water, a gross heat of vaporisation of 2.9 kWh/m³, which at 98 % heat recovery leaves 0.058 kWh/m³. This is the physical reason the application suits the platform better than any task requiring the whole stream to be boiled off.
Limitations: light-ends offtake changes crude RVP and volume — the split has to be optimised per market; dry-salt logistics; feed variability by crude slate.
Key Parameters
Conditions: deep vacuum; ambient temperature (no heat supplied).
Energy: 1–2.5 kWh per tonne of inlet stream; heat recovery up to 98 %.
Emissions: CO₂ < 0.1 kg/t; SOₓ zero; NOₓ < 0.05 kg/t.
Water recovery: up to 99.98 % (Arbok-VC platform figure).
Capacity: 150–200 t/day per module. Footprint: 20-ft container.
Staffing: 2 operators per 30–50 modules, remote.
Module count: 14 modules at 20 000 bbl/d; 34 at 50 000 bbl/d; 68 at 100 000 bbl/d.
CAPEX per module: [нужна информация или источник]. Ceiling implied by the economics below: $139 000–236 000 installed for a 5-year payback.
Architecture and Components
Vacuum separation vessel; multi-valve solids and brine separator; condensation and distillate collection; salt crystallisation and dry-salt receiver; light-ends and gas collection; control system. Containerised, mounted on asphalt or concrete in the open air. Not embedded in the process train — standalone at the tank farm, which keeps it serviceable without touching the atmospheric unit.
Advantages
Technical: works at ambient temperature, so no place inside the preheat train is required; unaffected by the two physical limits of electrostatic desalting — solids-armoured interfacial films and high brine conductivity; four separated product streams in one pass.
Economic: eliminates demulsifiers, wash water, wash-water pumping, salty effluent treatment and desalter power; reduces preheat train fouling; adds dry salt and recovered light ends as revenue.
Environmental: removes 145 000 m³/year of fresh water abstraction at a 50 000 bbl/d refinery; eliminates the salty effluent load on the wastewater plant; zero liquid discharge.
Strategic: retrofit without a plant turnaround — the single largest barrier to a first commercial installation in refining.
Integrations
Application of the ARBOK-VC (Vacuum Cracking) platform. Sits upstream of the atmospheric unit; recovered light ends feed the vapour recovery system or product blending; dry salt routes to industrial salt offtake.
Deployment & Operation
Steps: crude assay (BS&W, PTB, solids) → module count sizing → tank farm installation → commissioning without unit shutdown. Continuous, automated, modular. Licensing and BOT/BOOM models applicable.
Technology Readiness Level (TRL)
Underlying platform ARBOK-VC is TRL 9 (confirmed by Michael). This specific application — cold desalting of marketable crude at a refinery tank farm — has no field reference recorded in the base. TRL for the application: [нужна информация или источник].
Market Potential
The United States operates 130 refineries totalling 18.2 million bbl/d (1 January 2026), down 250 000 bbl/d and two plants over 2025. Preheat train fouling costs US refining $1.2 billion a year. Global refining capacity is about 103 million bbl/d. Estimated value of the eliminated cost base: roughly $0.5 billion a year across US refining and on the order of $2.8 billion a year globally. Water scarcity is shifting from a budget item to a permitting condition in California, Texas and the Middle East, which favours a process that removes fresh-water abstraction entirely.
Typical Project Economics
Reference case, 50 000 bbl/d refinery, annual, US dollars. Removed: demulsifiers 500 000; wash water and pumping 152 000; salty effluent treatment 145 000; desalter power 22 000; preheat fouling attributable to salt 989 000. Added: process energy −493 000. Salt product: 414 t/year at $100/t = +41 000 (1 656 t and $166 000 on highly mineralised crudes at 200 PTB).
Net: $1.36 million per year. At 20 000 bbl/d — $0.54 million; at 100 000 bbl/d — $2.7 million. Per barrel: $0.074.
Assumptions requiring validation: 30 % of preheat fouling attributed to salt (not sourced); water at $1.0/m³; effluent treatment at $1.0/m³; power at $0.08/kWh.
Risk Factors
CAPEX per module unknown, so payback is unproven. Specific energy on the dehydration-only duty has not been measured — the ceiling capex swings from $114 000 to $253 000 per module across the plausible energy range. Light-ends removal alters crude RVP and marketable volume. Per-barrel saving of $0.074 is thin, so the sale rests on water abstraction, effluent elimination and turnaround-free retrofit rather than on cost per barrel. Refinery procurement is conservative and the US market is contracting. Dry-salt offtake and product-grade qualification.
Related Technologies
ARBOK-VC (Vacuum Cracking) · ARBOK-ORR (Oil Regeneration & Recover) · ARBOK-GUDRON · ARBOK-SULPHUR · ARBOK-CRYSTALLIZER