Abstract: The troubles of over current tripping, flooding and serious oil carrying in the discharged water from the first stage desalting unit often appear when processing the crude oil with high water content in the 1.6 Mt/a desalting unit in Sinopec Jingmen Company. To solve these problems, the improved pulse and desalting techniques were adopted. Then the flooding phenomenon is disappeared, desalination rate is up to 96.90 % and desalination pass rate is over 93.21%. Furthermore, several proposals were suggested in order to improve the electric desalination, such as optimizing demulsifier, using crude oil pretreatment agent in crude oil tank, and adding the new flow-path of electric desalination sewage discharge.