Water pollution abatement in a petroleum refinery

Claim 1

In a refinery operation comprising crude oil distillation in combination with atmospheric distillation of the charge and vacuum distillation of high boiling constituents therefrom, catalytic cracking of gas oil constituents of said distillation, product fractionation of said catalytic cracking and reforming of naphtha boiling material the improvement for recovering phenols from the condensate water phase of said catalytic cracking operation which comprises accumulating water phase phenolic constituents of catalytic cracking by cooling vaporous material to obtain a first hydrocarbon phase separate from a first water condensate phase and a vapor phase, refluxing a portion of the first hydrocarbon phase to the upper portion of a product fractioNation tower from which it came, recontacting the remaining portion of the first hydrocarbon phase with the vaporous phase at a higher pressure than employed in the first separation step, cooling and effecting a further separation of the combined vaporous hydrocarbon phase to recover a second vaporous material separately from a gasoline phase and a second water phase, combining the first water phase with the second water phase, combining overhead vaporous material comprising light straight run naphtha obtained from atmospheric distillation maintained at a temperature of about 240* F. in the upper portion thereof with said combined water phases, cooling the combined water phases to a temperature of about 100* F. and thereafter separating to form a third water phase separate from a light hydrocarbon phase comprising naphtha and a vapor phase, refluxing a portion of said light hydrocarbon phase to the upper portion of said atmospheric distillation and passing the remaining portion thereof to catalytic reforming, combining vacuum tower oily condensate waters with said third water phase and employing the thus combined waters for desalting of a crude oil charge before passing the charge to the above identified atmospheric distillation tower.