Crude oil contains numerous impurities, among which water, brine, and salt are considered to be the most important and destructive pollutants. Due to their high corrosiveness, these impurities cause extensive, serious damage and destructive effects to equipment, transmission lines and downstream process Therefore, desalination is an inevitable process in oil fields and refineries. Desalination units are among the most important units in oil extraction and refining.

Desalination in the oil industry is carried out in two stages:

Stage one: Desalination of crude oil in the production fields and before transfer to the refinery.

Stage two: Desalination in the refinery, which is in the form of a process unit in the refinery and is usually the first stage in crude oil refining.

There are various methods for desalinating of crude oil, the most important of which is the electrostatic method. This method uses the property of salt being soluble in water and not in the oil itself, and the polarity of the salt water solution against the electrical neutrality of the oil is used.

HEDCO has developed its own technology for desalters, and performs the design, engineering, fabrication and construction of these units with:

• Different capacities from hundred to hundred thousand BPD ,
• Different from 5PTB for first stage to L.T. 1PTB for second stage (PTB – pounds of salt per thousand barrels of crude oil)

and in form of modular skid mounted type and/or field erected units.