Zeeco’s Jesse Chambers, Jim Smith, and Keith Wade explain how pre-turnaround performance audits, pre-retrofit checklists, and visual flare inspections can identify issues and equipment needed for process heaters and flare systems for refineries and gas processing plants.
A refinery that experiences an unplanned outage due to equipment failure counts the cost per hour until it is back to full production. Proper performance audits and necessary flare and burner pre-turnaround inspections help prevent unplanned plant downtime and enable combustion equipment to operate most efficiently. Energy costs represent a significant portion of the cost of running a chemical/petrochemical/refining complex. Furnace and heater fuel is a significant component of this cost. When most refinery operations include multiple process heaters with multi-burner configurations, small gains in efficiency can result in noticeable gains to the bottom line. In addition to low-Btu gases, flaring waste gases at less than optimum operating efficiencies results in higher costs for the fuel gases used to boost the lower heating value (LHV) to achieve necessary destruction removal efficiencies.
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