Introduction of Process Fired Heater

2010.02.23 Jun-Young Hwang / Plant Team II

What is the Process Fired Heater?

1. Classification between Fired Pressure Vessel and Unfired Pressure Vessel
The static equipments for Oil, Gas & Petrochemical Plant is made up of Heater(Furnace), Boiler, Column, Reactor, Heat Exchanger and Pressure vessel. The fired pressure vessel contact the burning fuel directly and made up of Heater(Furnace) and Boiler. The other pressure vessel does not contact the burning feul directly were called unfired pressure vessel such as Column, Reactor Heat Exchanger and Pressure vessel. The following figure is showing the classification of plant equipments. Fired Pressure Vessels Static Equipment
Heater, Boiler & Oven

Unfired Pressure Vessels

Column, Reactor & P/V

Oil, Gas & Petrochemical Plant Equipment

Turbine
Steam & Gas

Rotating Equipment

Compressors
Air, Gas & Refrigerant

Pumps Water & Oil

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What is the Process Fired Heater?

2. Process Fired Heater is..
Process Fired Heater is one of the fired pressure vessels supplying heat to the plant. The difference between boiler and fired heater is that the heating object is water or not. If the heating object is water, we call it is boiler and the others are fired heater. The purpose of the heater is to raise the energy level and then change the phase of substances.

2.1 License Process Fired Heater

In order to build the process of Ammonia & Urea Plant, LDPE/HDPE Plant and Ethylene Plant, the enginering companies such as Haldor Topse, Davy Process Technology, Jacobs Process & Technology have their own license design the fired heater package based on the condition for required performance. The heater manufacturing company such as JNK Heaters Co., Ltd, Heurtey Petrochem and Born Canada make detail engineering, procurement, fabrication, and installation at job site. We call this heater package as License process Fired Heater Package. Steam Hydrocarbon Reformer Cracking Furnace(Pyrolysis Heaters)

2.2 General Process Fired Heater

The refinery plant require fired heaters without license process. We call this as general fired heater. This genral fired heaters are engineered and manufactured by several companies such as Linde(Germany), JNK Heaters, Born Canda, Heurtey petrochem and ABB Heat Transfer. Crude Charge Heater for CDU* Vacuum Charge Heater for VDU* Steam Super Heater Hot Oil Heater
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Classification of Process Fired Heater and Major Players

Petro-Chemical Plant License Process Fired Heater Process Fired Heater Refinery Plant General Process Fired Heater Vacuum Charge Heater for VDU Steam Super Heater Hot Oil Heater Steam Hydrocarbon Reformer Cracking Furnace (Pyrolysis Heaters) Crude Charge Heater for CDU

MAJOR PLAYERS
LICENSOR HEATER VENDOR HEATER MANUFACTURER(Korea)

Haldor Topsoe(Denmark) ABB Heat Transfer(USA) Technip KTI(Italy) Linde(Germany) Jacobs(UK) KBR(UK) Davy Process Technology

Technip KTI(Italy) Linde(Germany) ABB Heat Transfer(USA) Born Canada(Canada) JNK Heaters(Korea) MHI(Japan) Heurtey & Petrochem(USA)

KIC(Korea) Sungchang(Korea) EG Humantec(Korea)

Process Fired Heater Components

Radiant Unit

Convection Unit

Stack

Burner

Refractory Lining

Radiant Coil

Details of General Process Fired Heater 1. Crude Charge Heater

The typical refinery contains one or more Crude Heaters which serve as "fractionator feed heaters" or Charge Heaters for the Crude (or Atmospheric) Distillation Column. The desalted crude oil is first preheated in a series of heat exchangers, utilizing waste heat from other parts of the refinery. It then flows to the direct-fired Crude Heater. The oil is heated in the furnace up to temperatures of about 700 F and fairly high percentage vaporization (from lows of 30% to 35% to as high as 80% in some cases). Despite these challenging operating conditions, Crude Heaters have been successfully designed with both vertical and horizontal tubes.

2. Vacuum Charge Heater

Downstream of many Crude or Atmospheric Distillation Units is a Vacuum Distillation Unit, which gets more light hydrocarbons out of every barrel of oil by operating at a pressure slightly below atmospheric. A Vacuum Heater serves as "fractionator feed heater" or Charge Heater for the Vacuum Distillation Column. Bottoms from the Crude Tower are processed in the Vacuum Heater Although it typically operates at lower pressures and, most often, lower percent vaporization than the Crude Heater, the Vacuum Heater must heat the fluid to higher temperatures (up to about 800 F). Also, because of the low pressure, even the lower percent vaporization creates a very high fluid volume and thus it is common for large-bore tubes to be used near the furnace outlet. For these reasons, Vacuum Heater designs usually require horizontal tubes.

Details of General Process Fired Heater 3. Hot Oil Heater

Hot oil is used, like steam, as a circulating heat transfer medium that can then be utilized in a variety of small, locally-placed heat exchangers. Like column reboilers, the typical Hot Oil Heater (sometimes called a Heat Medium Heater) represents a very mild service. Most modern heat transfer fluids such as Dowtherm, Therminol, etc. have been specifically designed to allow use of carbon steel tubes in the Hot Oil Heater. Further, these fluids can tolerate fairly high heat fluxes without breaking down chemically. For these reasons, the typical Hot Oil Heater is a Vertical Cylindrical design.

4. Steam Super Heater

Steam superheaters are used for the generation of high temperature steam requred as a heat source for the reactions occurring in stylene monomer production processes.

Details of License Process Fired Heater Package 1. Steam Hydrocarbon Reformer

These are typically large furnaces, designed either to produce large volumes of hydrogen for use in other refinery processes such as hydrotreating or hydrocracking, or to supply syngas (a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and residual methane and steam) for downstream conversion to products such as ammonia or methanol. The feedstock, typically natural gas but sometimes light liquids such as naphtha, is preheated and then combined with steam. It then flows through furnace tubes packed with catalyst, over which the following desired chemical reaction takes place. Steam-Hydrocarbon or Steam-Methane Reformers are extremely complex from both process and mechanical points of view. Process outlet temperatures can be as high as 1650 F. Regardless of the manufacturer, the furnace tubes are invariably vertically disposed and almost without exception double-fired (i.e. heated from both sides). Many different burner configurations are available, each with a claim to some unique advantages. The most common are top-fired (burners mounted on the roof or "arch" of the radiant section), sidewall-fired (with special burners yielding very compact flames), and terrace-wall fired (with two or more levels of burners firing vertically upwards on either side of a row of tubes).

Details of License Process Fired Heater Package

2. Cracking Furnace(Pyrolysis Heaters)

Cracking furnaces are utilized to produce olefins such as ethylene and propylene from light hydrocarbons such as ethane, propane, and naphtha. The olefins are then processed downstream to create other products, including many plastics and synthetic fibers. Even more complex than SteamHydrocarbon Reformers, typical Cracking Furnaces operate with extremely high outlet temperatures. The tubes are not filled with catalyst; the desired reactions are initiated merely by the high temperatures involved. At the same time, undesirable side reactions can occur, so the "residence time" of the fluid within the heater must be minimized. This results in a staggering variety of unique, proprietary designs utilizing the most advance metallurgy and complex coil configurations.

General Process Fired Heater Package Contract Map

General Process Fired Heater Package Contract Map General Process Fired Heater Package Contract Map

END USER

SHELL, ARAMCO, CHEVRON, TOTAL, BOROUGE, SK, GS CALTEX and etc.

EPC

KBR, BECHTEL, JACOBS, CB&I, GSE&C, SKEC, SEI and etc

Process Fired Heater Unit Turnkey Order

HEATER VENDOR

Technip KTI(Italy), ABB Heat Transfer(USA), Born Canada(Canada), JNK Heaters(Korea), Linde(Germany)

Heater Component, equipments and Installation Order

FABRICATOR

Manufacturing and Installation Companies

License Process Fired Heater Package Contract Map

License Process Fired Heater Package Contract Map License Process Fired Heater Package Contract Map

END USER

SHELL, ARAMCO, CHEVRON, TOTAL, BOROUGE, SK, GS CALTEX and etc.

License Contract

LICENSOR

Haldor Topsoe(Denmark), Technip KTI(Italy), Linde(Germany), Jacobs(UK) and etc.

Detail Engg , Package

Process Fired Heater Unit Order

VENDOR

Technip KTI(Italy), ABB Heat Transfer(USA), Born Canada(Canada), JNK Heaters(Korea), Linde(Germay)
Heater Component, equipments and Installation Order

Technip KTI(Italy), Linde(Germany), ABB Heat Transer(USA), JNK Heaters (Korea)

Heater Component, equipments and Installation Order

FABRICATOR

Manufacturing and Installation Companies

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APPENDIX 1. The Flow diagram of typical refinery

Fired Heater

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APPENDIX 2. Common process units found in a refinery

Desalter unit washes out salt from the crude oil before it enters the atmospheric distillation unit. Atmospheric distillation unit distills crude oil into fractions. See Continuous distillation. Vacuum distillation unit further distills residual bottoms after atmospheric distillation. Naphtha hydrotreater unit uses hydrogen to desulfurize naphtha from atmospheric distillation. Must hydrotreat the naphtha before sending to a Catalytic Reformer unit. Catalytic reformer unit is used to convert the naphtha-boiling range molecules into higher octane reformate (reformer product). The reformate has higher content of aromatics and cyclic hydrocarbons). An important byproduct of a reformer is hydrogen released during the catalyst reaction. The hydrogen is used either in the hydrotreaters or the hydrocracker. Distillate hydrotreater unit desulfurizes distillates (such as diesel) after atmospheric distillation. Fluid catalytic cracker (FCC) unit upgrades heavier fractions into lighter, more valuable products. Hydrocracker unit uses hydrogen to upgrade heavier fractions into lighter, more valuable products. Visbreaking unit upgrades heavy residual oils by thermally cracking them into lighter, more valuable reduced viscosity products. Merox unit treats LPG, kerosene or jet fuel by oxidizing mercaptans to organic disulfides. Coking units (delayed coking, fluid coker, and flexicoker) process very heavy residual oils into gasoline and diesel fuel, leaving petroleum coke as a residual product. Alkylation unit produces high-octane component for gasoline blending. Dimerization unit converts olefins into higher-octane gasoline blending components. For example, butenes can be dimerized into isooctene which may subsequently be hydrogenated to form isooctane. There are also other uses for dimerization. Isomerization unit converts linear molecules to higher-octane branched molecules for blending into gasoline or feed to alkylation units.

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APPENDIX 2. Common process units found in a refinery

Steam reforming unit produces hydrogen for the hydrotreaters or hydrocracker. Liquified gas storage units for propane and similar gaseous fuels at pressure sufficient to maintain in liquid form. These are usually spherical vessels or bullets (horizontal vessels with rounded ends. Storage tanks for crude oil and finished products, usually cylindrical, with some sort of vapor emission control and surrounded by an earthen berm to contain spills. Amine gas treater, Claus unit, and tail gas treatment for converting hydrogen sulfide from hydrodesulfurization into elemental sulfur. Utility units such as cooling towers for circulating cooling water, boiler plants for steam generation, instrument air systems for pneumatically operated control valves and an electrical substation. Wastewater collection and treating systems consisting of API separators, dissolved air flotation (DAF) units and some type of further treatment (such as an activated sludge biotreater) to make such water suitable for reuse or for disposal.[3] Solvent refining units use solvent such as cresol or furfural to remove unwanted, mainly asphaltenic materials from lubricating oil stock (or diesel stock). Solvent dewaxing units remove the heavy waxy constituents petrolatum from vacuum distillation products.

Some articles and explationations of this material are sourced from the website of Born Canada Inc. and wikipedia.

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