Q&A

How do you manage the potential negative impacts of H2S Scavengers in imported coker feed?

Heater fouling is dependent on several variables that include the process film temperature, residence time at temperature and coke precursor concentration. I like to target a coke drum outlet temperature of 825°F before quench injection, which normally requires a Coker heater outlet temperature of 925°F.

Predicting coke morphology from feed properties has not been 100% successful as the Coker operating conditions can make a difference if the feed is close to the shot coke vs. sponge coke threshold. The traditional approach uses the asphaltene content of the feed divided by the concarbon value of the feed.

Coke fine generation is really a function of the coke cutting process. Feed stock and coke drum operations during the actual drum fill cycle have very little to nothing to do with the generation of coke fines.

ABIGAIL SLATER (HollyFrontier)
Salting typically occurs in the reactor effluent exchangers (shell and tube and fin fans), recycle and net gas compressors, and product stabilizer overhead system (top trays, overhead condenser, etc.). Common monitoring practices on exchangers and fin fans can be

DAVINDER MITTAL (HPCL Mittal Energy)
Chlorides have been a long standing issue in catalytic reformer operation. Until a few years ago, the focus on preventing operational problems from the chloride compounds in the catalytic reformer product stream was to remove HCl.  More recently, a growing

BILL KOSTKA (AXENS NORTH AMERICA)
Metal-catalyzed coke (MCC) formation typically occurs on 3d valence transition metals such as iron and nickel.  Under CCR-like conditions of low hydrogen partial pressure (less than about 620 kpa), high temperature (more than about 480 °C) and low or stagnant flow

BILL KOSTKA (AXENS NORTH AMERICA)
Liquid-phase Cl treaters are typically used in three locations for reforming units.

Treating the unstabilzed reformate stream provides several advantages.  The stream is heated upstream of the stabilizer column which ensures that any ammonium chloride is

ABIGAIL SLATER (HollyFrontier)
The most impactful parameter affecting alky acid consumption is feed quality. Reducing feed contamination will greatly reduce acid consumption. There are also operational changes that can be made to reduce acid consumption, but the biggest impact will be feed

KAISER (Delek Refining Ltd.) The question is very well phrased in that the introduction of ethanol into the blend pool does tend to reduce the need to run the isomerization unit in that ethanol is a very high RVP blend component, and it has enough octane to be able to possibly offset the need for the octane boost that you’re getting out of your isomerization unit. So when a refiner wants to introduce the ethanol into their blend pool, there are three likely scenarios that they’ll go through in their unit operations. The first is obviously shut the isomerization unit down.