Category Archives for Process Troubleshooting
Corrosion Inhibitor
To clean up amine, the rate of particulate generation must be slowed and the iron sulfide already in the amine filtered out. Reducing corrosion rates is the way to do this. In one Midwestern refinery, the amine solution was thick … Continue reading
Cleaning Up Amine
The iron sulfide particulates circulating in a dirty amine system have built up from a combination of factors. Foremost among these is inadequate filtering. There are three common types of filters: rotary precoat filters, cartridge filters, and stacked paper plates. … Continue reading
Dirty Amine Ruins Operation
Running a sulfur recovery operation with dirty amine is analogous to deficit spending. You are borrowing against the future, but the day of reckoning will surely come. The insidious aspect of circulating dirty amine is its erosive nature. Carbon steel … Continue reading
Dirty Amine
Symptoms of a dirty, corrosive amine system are: Carry-over of amine from the scrubbers. Dilution of the amine system with water due to reboiler leaks. Plugging of instrument taps with particulates in the amine. Loss of amine to the sewer … Continue reading
Amine regeneration flowsheet
Figure 4-1 is a process flowsheet showing how amine solution is circulated to various refinery scrubbers to absorb H2S. The lean amine chemically combines with H2S (and unavoidably some C02) in the scrubbers. The resulting rich amine is stripped in … Continue reading
Retrofitted combination tower to save energy
The hot coke drum vapors are a valuable source of high-level heat. This energy, which is partially recovered in the combination tower heavy gas-oil pumparound section, can be used for generating steam, preheating coker feed, or reboiling a gas plant. … Continue reading
Explosion-Proof Trays
Coker fractionators are subject to damaging pressure surges due to accidental flashing of water. The pressure surges results in the tray decks “ripping” away from the tray support rings. Actually, the tray decks are not ripped away from the support … Continue reading
Combination Tower
A delayed coker combination tower is similar in design and function to an ordinary crude distillation tower; heat is removed and products are fractionated. Referring to Figure 3-1, four products are made: wet gas, unstabilized naphtha or wild gasoline, furnace … Continue reading
Vapor Line Restriction
Coke that builds up in the coke drum overhead vapor line is responsible for most of the back-pressure incidents. Operators find that tearing the insulation off these lines slows the rate at which coke deposits. A better method is to … Continue reading
Wet Gas Compressor
Vapors from the coke drum must pressure their way through to the combination tower reflux drum. Any restriction to their flow will increase the operating pressure of the coke drum. To avoid exceeding the coke drum relief valve pressure, some … Continue reading