Creep calculations indicate a crude furnace radiant section carbon steel tubes exceeding their life fraction due to flame impingement reaching up to 700°C for a year. The ambiguity of the temperature and material data means the life fraction of creep calculations were based on limited inspection data and infra-red scanning giving a conservative indication of end of life. Due to unavailable tubes in stock, a planned pit stop cannot be arranged due to economic and safety reasons as the furnace may not be started back up safely. To safeguard the integrity of the furnace until the planned outage, the temperature on the furnace tube was stabilized to a current limit of 540°C through improvements in burner operations. The crude diet was also maintained within the crude acceptance envelope. Visual checks at every shift were done to ensure no observation from tube bulging or uneven flame pattern. A decision tree was created to facilitate quick decision making using a go/no go criteria of which tubes to replace during the August 2015 planned turnaround. The criteria set for the decision tree required tube wall thickness, surface hardness test, tube outer diameter ring gauge to be examined. Failing any of the criteria will require the tube to be replaced. The replaced tubes (one worst and one representative) will also be lab tested through destructive examination to identify the degradation mechanism and high temperature properties of the worst tubes to quantitatively define the high temperature properties and life fraction of the tubes that are left in the furnace. The lab test will provide results after a year of creep testing and can give assurance of continued furnace operation for 4 more years until the next outage. The final decision after the examination based on the decision tree was made required 17 tubes to be replaced in this turnaround. The worst degraded tubes were found to be at the vicinity of the initial observed location around the flame impingement zone.
Fitness for Service (FFS) assessment and remaining life assessment of the furnace floor plates in a crude charge heater where hot spots up to 500°C have been observed during operation in 2018 was undertaken as a pre assessment prior to the unit turnaround. The remaining life assessment results would provide the turnaround team with firm scope for repair in order to resintate the bottom plate and avoid discovery scope. Two Finite Element (FE) models were created to account for hotspot temperature conditions measured at November 2018 and June 2019. Each of these FE models involved successive loading conditions, so that the effects of each loading scenario could be investigated. The loading conditions were applied in steps, in the following order: 1. Gravity. 2. Temperature, modelling hotspot behaviour. 3. Creep, viscoelastic analysis. Utilising the FE models created for the two hotspot conditions, remaining life was calculated and suggested that the worst location for creep damage is near burner 2 (the maximum creep damage location of the November 2018 condition). Based on the assessment, the following recommendations are made: 1. Continue to observe and maintain temperatures below the creep temperature range (i.e. no additional hotspots are created and temperatures are not increasing). 2. Undertake creep testing from metal samples. 3. Re-inspect in 8 years at the same locations where metallographic replication was performed in September 2019.
Efficient refinery start-up and shutdown durations are vital in establishing prolonged productivity in refineries operating hydrotreating reactors. The benefits of efficient start up and shutdown cycles are extensive, and include considerable operational and cost reduction. Reduced start-up and shutdown cycles, however, require increased heating and cooling rates, which cause higher temperature gradients throughout the reactor vessel, consequently leading to higher thermal stresses, which may affect damage mechanisms and limit reactor’s life. The equipment’s OEM has defined guidelines for the reactor heating and cooling during start-up and shutdown cycles and any attempt to reduce the start-up and shutdown duration is usually limited by these guidelines. It is therefore necessary to carry out an engineering assessment to determine the effect of changing the start-up and shutdown procedures beyond the OEM guidelines on reactor’s life. Multiple thermo-mechanical Finite Element analyses for a series of different start-up/ shutdown procedures, including the current procedure, were carried out to determine the through-wall thermal gradient and stresses, and identify the most critical locations. In order to estimate convective heat transfer coefficients, Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) analysis was utilized to describe the complex fluid flow behavior of the feedstock in the presence of catalysts and internal geometry features. Low Cycle Fatigue (LCF) was adopted as a main damage mechanism to quantify the damage as a result of the changed operating conditions. It was determined that the LCF life calculated in the reactor vessel’s critical damage locations was found to be sufficiently long with respect to the frequency of start/shutdown cycles, even with operating conditions exceeding the OEM limit. Therefore, alternative guidelines were suggested to achieve the time reduction in startup/shutdown operation by increasing ramp rates without compromising structural integrity of the vessel.
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