The purpose of this paper to emphasize the lessons learned by ADNOC Sour Gas of material upgrading in the Shah Sulphur Granulation plant due to severe corrosion of Aluminium components. The Sulphur Granulation plant was commissioned in 2015, the granulation unit consists of a total of 12 packaged granulating systems used for solidifying and granulating the liquid sulphur. The study focused on the corroded areas which are the GX Plenum chambers, lower section of Granulator exhaust stack, Scrubber inlet and discharge ducting. Root Cause Analysis (RCA) was undertaken to understand and identify the cause of the corrosion. The study indicated that the corrosion of Aluminium components is typical of wet acidic attack. Wet acid is being produced in the granulator drum where atomised liquid sulphur is quenched by demineralized water to produce sulphur granules. The highly acidic vapours further travel to the exhaust stack through scrubber. The paper discusses the typical damage mechanism indicating the source of acidic species, their generation, corrosive attack and mitigation under plant operating conditions. It has been observed that under full capacity the plant utilized all the 12 granulators, therefore insufficient time for cleaning and acid water disposal. Therefore, Aluminium which is a universally recommended material for sulphur granulation plant is suffering severe material degradation. This has led to go for a detailed material review with process requirement. Entire plant equipment was segregated in 2 parts as per severity of corrosion. After the engineering study, the Plenum chamber and associated piping to scrubber duct will be upgraded with Stainless Steel SS316L having less severe corrosion. The Outlet piping from scrubber to FD fan and Exhaust Stack were affected the most, and it was recommended to replace these areas recommended with GRVE. The current arrangement with upgradedmaterial will assist all new projects to design plants either with enough unit redundancies for routine cleaning or use more resistant material to combat corrosion.
Although refractories materials are resistant to high temperatures, the initial mechanical properties are drastically influenced by the way of removing the water and further development of ceramic bonding reactions during the firing process of dry-out. Lifetime of monolithic refractories can be reduced when mechanically induced cracks are developed and laminations or spalling of outer layers is promoted. Refractory dry-out process is normally accomplished by utilizing installed combustion means and permanent temperature monitoring instrumentation, strategically placed in specific locations to cater normal operation and protection of the equipment. Controlled heat up is followed by adjusting the combustion parameters to achieve the desired rates to safely complete the drying process for refractories materials. However, these permanent thermocouples cannot anticipate local temperature profiles as part of the normal heat distribution inside the combustion chamber. For that reason, sacrificial thermocouple is the most suitable local temperature measurement device to cover the specific interested spotted location inside the chamber during firing operations avoiding excursion outside dry-out plan. This paper will display ADNOC Sour Gas experience on utilizing sacrificial thermocouples in order to monitor temperature for operational drying out activities after refractory repairs. This will provide other companies which has no experience with installing sacrificial thermocouples for the same purpose, the confidence to implement and to install it for refractory dry-out and thus, preventing any premature failure on refractory materials. The importance of dry-out procedure and its effect on the material properties will be further explained along with the methodology of installing sacrificial thermocouple, key parameters to follow during the dry-out plan and temperature profiles using sacrificial thermocouples Vs installed instrumentation will be presented on the technical discussion.
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