i guess its all depend on how much of sands content on your emulsions.
by having desanding system integrated inside your heater treater then what about your pre heater, do you have desanding system integrated in pre heater also? if you don`t, than i think that's where your problem all came from. by looking at your descriptions that you need to do maintenance/cleaning of heater treater 2 times per week i really not recommend you to remove your pre heater (back up of your heater treater) as long as you don`t put a sand trap on the upstream. by adding sand trap in the upstream we hope that all emulsion entering heater treater are already clean of sand so you will need not to do the shut down of your heater treater for maintenance 2 times a week.

here i have an image of one of our sand trap (this picture are taken during modifications of the sand trap)

[link Point to another website Only the registered members can access]
this sand trap are set before entering choke manifold (not quite high pressure well, its around 2000 - 3000 psi)
by adding this sand trap before choke manifold, we hope that all of our equipment downstream will be safe of internally sand grinding. and of course less maintenance also.

cheers,


adi cahyanto