Chiofalo G., Gazzotti V., Giacobbe A., Lamattina G., Saraceno A., Ollà E., 2026, Managing Naphthenic Acid Corrosion in Atmospheric and Vacuum Distillation Units of a Petroleum Refinery, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 126, 91-96.
In recent decades, many oil refineries have focused entirely on flexibility, blending low-quality crude oils with sweet crudes or directly processing high-acidity and high-sulphur crudes. To monitor sulfidation and naphthenic acid corrosion, two years ago the Milazzo refinery installed a monitoring system, through ultrasonic corrosion probes, and a corrosion inhibitor injection system in the two atmospheric distillation units. Recently, these mitigation and control actions, have also been implemented in the vacuum distillation unit. This work resumes the article published by Chiofalo et al. (2024), it shows the results obtained in two years of monitoring and it presents the first results recorded on the vacuum distillation unit.
