Think plumber's P-trap. The one under your sink serves to keep sewer gases from backing up into your house. Liquid is held in place by gravity and provides a barrier vapors can't get through.
In refineries some form of liquid seal is typically found in vacuum system seals, flare drums, sulfur...
DP based coker charge and heater charge meters are often problematic. As you eluded to, keeping the process fluid out of the impulse lines is usually your best bet. Glycerine filled has provided the best (still not great) reliability for DP measurements in tar service in my experience.
I'd...
I've seen upset conditions in a tower do exactly what ash9144 describes. The tower had a water wash in the overhead system. It was equipped with a thermosyphon reboiler, and the bottoms was not hot enough to boil water at operating pressure. When interface level failed in the overhead...
Crush strength and abrasion loss are typically reported by vendors for SRU catalysts as well.
Another thought, how are the rundown legs attached to the condensers in your SRU? The units I've worked with where the seal legs come directly out of the condenser cover plates operate fairly trouble...
I guess fines generation through attrition could cause this, but it seems unusual. Perhaps wetting the catalyst then heating up too fast could popcorn it, if a shutdown cycle was involved.
A colleague of mine once shared a story about an SRU so heavily sooted from burning hydrocarbon that it...
RogerH is absolutely right about the tail gas unit issue. If you're short on hydrogen or have some catalyst damage, SO2 can breakthrough and form thiosulfate heat stable amine salts. This will likely be coupled with cloudy, low pH quench water, and possibly a lot of quench filter changes.
If...
Here's some rules of thumb to get you started. Start with about 20 real trays for the absorber. 30 real trays for the regenerator, feed on tray 26. Apply a stage efficiency of 30% for amine systems. Reboiler duty equivalent to 1 lb of stripping steam per gallon of amine would be typical...
Sulfuric acid and and caustic are where I've had the best luck reducing mercury throughput. Between Alky and Merox units and other various uses they tend to see a lot more bulk use than other chemicals in a refinery. Crude and natural gas might be the only things you actually purchase more of...
The article at this address provides a good general description of the main commercial processes for sulfur degassing:
http://www.worleyparsons.com/GlobalPresence/SouthEastAsia/MumbaiTenders/Documents/Sulphur%20Collection%20with%20Degassing.pdf
I can't say if any of these licensors would...
My gut feel here is that your simulation results are "right". What you are likely seeing the impact of the presence of water vapor on the partial pressure of the hydrocarbon components in the vapor phase. Diluting the light hydrocarbons with another vapor, water in this case, causes more of...
I've heard of gravity being used as a monitoring point for systems such as you're proposing. Say you put in a 32 API diesel to start with. As it sponges light ends the API gravity will slowly increase over time. Provided you have skim points to grab an oil sample from you can measure gravity...
I've seen elemental mercury found in Crude preheat exchangers. Mercury boils at 674 F; however, it exerts a fairly high vapor pressure. It tends to concentrate in naphtha stabilizer/debutanizer areas. Also, catalyst units tend to be too hot to tie up mercury as amalgem, so the stuff can carry...
Any chance you have a spray bar or some sort of caustic distributor? I've seen these plug up with caustic salts. At a constant caustic flow rate, the increasing velocity resulting from the fouling produces ever smaller droplets until you hit a droplet size that you just can't separate with the...
Sour water strippers can be rather challenging units to keep operating, depending on your feed quality. Dissolved solids, heavy hydrocarbon contamination, and other issues can foul towers and exchangers occasionally causing out of cycle shutdowns to address the fouling issues. A nice big...
This is a pretty normal configuration for a Claus tail gas treating unit hydrogenation reactor. As Yitbos notes, low pressure drop is key because the upstream Claus plant is a low pressure unit. This vessel is not divided flow; though in some small Claus units you will find a reactor such as...
SMR units usually have a guard bed in the front end to protect the reforming catalyst from sulfur in the feed. The company I work for usually gets the stuff from Johnson Matthey or Haldor Topsoe.
You can extract mercaptan from LPG pretty effectively with 20 Baume caustic. Without a regen...
A centrifugal pump imparts energy into a fluid in the form of velocity. The shape of the pump then turns that velocity into pressure head. The pump puts energy into the liquid and the liquid carries it away. If there is not enough flow, the temperature of the pump will rise and eventually...
There is also no better time that chemical cleaning to contaminate your utilities and cause untold headaches. Never count on heat exchanger bundles not leaking. Getting cleaning solutions into your cooling water or condensate systems can really ruin your day. I'd recommend blinding utilities...
I avoid chemical cleaning wherever possible. Planning it is a hassle, and execution has potential to turn into a real mess. The condensate and/or effluent needs to be carefully controlled and likely captured to avoid upset to the waste water plant or sour water handling systems.
That being...
