There has been news today, that several European refineries are cutting their Russian crude oil supply, because it contains high levels of organic chloride, that is corroding the refinery equipment.
My problem is, I will be taking my car to Russia this summer, and I am a little concerned that Russian gas stations will probably be selling gasoline refined from the contaminated crude. Do the Organic Chlorides pass from Crude Oil to the gasoline, and is there any risk in using it in my car?
I remember looking into this when California refineries were dealing with this problem, probably 10 years ago or so. I never found anything that indicated there was a danger to vehicles. The organic chlorides screwed up the processing equipment and therefore made it harder to refine gasoline, but the gasoline that was refined was still gasoline. The corrosive stuff stays behind and wrecks the refinery’s equipment.
I doubt it. It is highly unlikely the chloride compounds evaporate and condense when gasoline does during the refining process.
Here’s a description of when it happened to a refinery on the US Gulf Coast:
A series of sudden tube leaks in four first-stage overhead exchangers of a crude tower of a major Gulf Coast refinery was attributed to repeated contamination of the crude charge with organic chlorides. Corrosion in these exchangers increased to the point where the remaining life of the exchangers was used up in a matter of weeks. The contaminated crude oils were traced back to a single supplier that had dumped organic-chloride containing hydrocarbon waste streams into one of the refinery’s pipelines over a period of 10 months, and possibly longer. The organic chloride content of the contaminated crude oils was found to have ranged from approximately 3 to 3,000 ppm (rag/L). Organic chlorides in crude oil are known to cause severe corrosion in crude tower overhead systems. Therefore, most refineries allow no more than 1 ppm (mg/L) organic chlorides in the crude charge. In this particular case, the actual crude charge contained at least 50 ppm (mg/L) at the time when most leaks occurred, and possibly as much as 255 ppm (mg/L).
So I agree with the others, it’s a problem for the refinery, but very unlikely to be in the gasoline.