jmarcano1
Petroleum
- Jul 9, 2009
- 1
Hello, I am operations engineer in an extra-heavy crude upgrader in Venezuela. Recently we had an issue shutting down a SRU (claus + scott tail gas) which had an internal leakage in the sulphur condenser.
The condenser have 3 passes, and some tubes of the 3rd pass were broken. As a consecuence, the drain line of the condenser´s 3rd pass result plugged. Due to that, we were unable to know if all the sulphur inside the equipment was drained during our shutdown procedure.
When we were at the cooling stage (before that, we had changed the natural gas flue gas for air progressively as any normal shutdown procedure), we noticed an increase of temperature in a termocouple of the tail gas line. Unfortunately, we had a fire inside the line. We controlled the fire cutting all the air and injecting nitrogen but the incident had happened.
My question is, does anyone have experience in similar situations? Which additional meausures do you take when you shutdown a plant with a similar condition?
I am creating a new special shutdown procedure for this cases and I am considering using nitrogen instead of air after desorbing the catalytic reactors. It is really expensive but I do not know any other action I could do.
Thank´s a lot in advance.
The condenser have 3 passes, and some tubes of the 3rd pass were broken. As a consecuence, the drain line of the condenser´s 3rd pass result plugged. Due to that, we were unable to know if all the sulphur inside the equipment was drained during our shutdown procedure.
When we were at the cooling stage (before that, we had changed the natural gas flue gas for air progressively as any normal shutdown procedure), we noticed an increase of temperature in a termocouple of the tail gas line. Unfortunately, we had a fire inside the line. We controlled the fire cutting all the air and injecting nitrogen but the incident had happened.
My question is, does anyone have experience in similar situations? Which additional meausures do you take when you shutdown a plant with a similar condition?
I am creating a new special shutdown procedure for this cases and I am considering using nitrogen instead of air after desorbing the catalytic reactors. It is really expensive but I do not know any other action I could do.
Thank´s a lot in advance.
