Avoid unnecessary costs by understanding process problems before taking action

When a piece of process equipment starts experiencing problems and producing off-spec product, every engineer’s reaction is to make a change to “fix” the problem and get it back on-spec. yet, many plants lack adequate instrumentation to completely diagnose the cause of the poor performance. Without a more complete understanding of the root cause of the problem, “corrective action” could have little effect or make the problem worse. Gathering supplemental ...

CO2 reduction in fried equipment

Fired heaters emit millions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) every year. Fired heaters usually have a fuel efficiency well below 100%, so any improvements that making them more efficient reduces CO2. Heaters are currently fuelled by carbon-bearing refinery fuel gas or natural gas, so further CO2 reduction is possible by changing to fuels with less carbon content. With the ever-changing regulatory climate, enacting an emissions reduction plan can provide a strategic advantage ...

Hydrogen fuel conversion in fired equipment

Organizations are facing unprecedented challenges in achieving their strategic climate goals. Now is the time to evaluate options for hydrogen refuelling, efficiency improvements, and novel methods of CO2 reduction in fired heaters and boilers. You can reduce carbon footprints by refuelling fired equipment with hydrogen or ammonia. When planning a refuelling effort there is much more to consider than just the Wobbe Index and combustion performance. The system will experience ...

Jet Pumps, Mixers, Heaters and Vacuum Systems

Jet pumps, also referred to as ejectors, are devices for the conveyance, compression or mixing of gases, vapors, liquids or solids in which a gaseous or liquid medium serves as the motive force. They operate by the conversion of pressure energy into velocity in suitable nozzles. They are “pumps without moving parts”. The basic principle of jet pumps consists in the liquid or gas jet being emitted by a nozzle at high speed entraining and accelerating the surrounding liquid, ...

Lance Scope™ Hot inspection service

Avoid Furnace Shut Down with Online Fired Heater Inspection. Is there an issue with your high temperature fixed equipment, but you can’t see the cause, or the exact site? We designed and developed Cetek’s Lancescope™ fired heater inspection tool for just this situation. It allows to undertake a high temperature furnace inspection to determine the scope of the problem, often avoiding an expensive shut down of the heater. Cetek’s Lancescope™ system provides real-time, ...

Making the invisible visible

In FCC Units (Fluidised Catalyst Cracking Units) the atmospheric residue from the distillation is cracked to LPG, naptha and other components. This sometimes leads to “invisible” deposits inside the Riser. This article features Tracerco’s ThruVision™ scans to illustrate how the technology helped the refinery to identify these deposits at an early stage. Bayernoil operates two FCC Units to convert heavy hydrocarbons. In the FCC Unit the feed is injected ...

Maximize reliability in grassroots crude units

Crude unit operators are far too familiar with a long list of crude unit reliability problems including fouling in heat exchangers and fired heaters, poor desalting, corrosion of piping and equipment, and coking in the vacuum column wash zone. Many millions of dollars have been spent fighting these problems, yet they continue to force unplanned shutdowns with depressing regularity. Revamps must address reliability issues, but project scope is hindered by the limitations of existing ...

MD FCC Catalysts - boosting middle distillates production in FCC

Maximizing middle distillates in FCC units. A range of catalysts is available from Albemarle for increasing the production of middle distillates in the FCC process while retaining the many other attractive features of this versatile bottom-ofthe- barrel upgrading process. The key to success is to adjust the catalyst properties for maximum production of LCO while maintaining maximum bottoms (slurry oil) destruction and good product quality. The middle distillate catalyst family ...

Moving gamma scanning forward — quantitative analysis of tray capacity

Improving process operating margins can include maximising production of higher value products and/or minimising production costs. Process plants depend heavily on fractionation towers to produce products meeting customer specifications. Tower gamma scanning is well established in the process industries as a qualitative tool to help troubleshoot fractionation towers. Using new measurement detector technology and innovative analysis of gamma scanning data Tracerco is now able to ...

Myth of the 1000°F vacuum unit cutpoint

Canadian Synbit and Dilbit crudes will come to make-up a substantial fraction of feedstocks to North American refineries. Today, however, for the most part refiners both north and south of the 40° parallel seem to be unaware of the extreme challenges this change will present. To run an oil sands crude in a vacuum unit designed for conventional heavy feedstocks and to expect a 1000°F cutpoint for a 5-6 year run is like believing in the Tooth Fairy. Bitumen based crudes ...

On-line heater and boiler chemical cleaning technology

GTC’s fired heater cleaning solves common process feed heater problems. With rising pressure to reduce energy costs, GTC’s advanced fired heater/boiler chemical cleaning technology is an effective way to improve heater efficiency without shutting down plant operations. Our technology is designed to quickly remove deposits such as slag and other fouling materials that build up over time on tube fire side surfaces. Fouling in the convection section caused by condensed ...

Opportunity or Annoyance?

Price differentials between conventional and opportunity crudes compel refiners to process increasing percentages of lower valued opportunity crude. However, as many refiners have learned the hard way, opportunity crudes are tied to unique processing challenges. Furthermore, existing crude unit configurations may limit high profit opportunity crude to a disappointingly small proportion of the total unit blend. Processing a changing slate of opportunity crudes of varying compositions ...

PackView™ - quantitative analysis of packing mal-distribution

The last issue of Tracerco Insight (Vol 6 Ed 1) featured our patent pending FrothView™ technology illustrating how using Tracerco’s new measurement detector technology and analysis of gamma scan data provides quantitative information about the useful capacity of trayed towers. In this article you will learn how applying this technology to packed towers can determine the % liquid fraction providing a measure of the maximum useful capacity of the packing. Enhanced ...

Servomex product guide

Our industry-leading gas analyser range and systems, matched to your industry requirements. Developed and manufactured in our UK and Americas Technical Centers, Servomex analyzers are hand-built to precise requirements. This ensures every product we make provides performance optimized to the needs of each customer process. Built around the stable, accurate and reliable gas measurements provided by our world-leading Hummingbird sensing technologies, our analyzers incorporate ...

Tracerco Diagnostics™

Providing real time measurement technologies to assist with critical decision making. Tracerco Scanning Services TRU-SCAN® Application. Do you have problems with the operation of your stripper/absorber or fractionation tower? Is this limiting production? Do you want to reduce your operating costs? Do you want to reduce your shutdown time? Tracerco’s Tru-Scan™ technology, utilizing FrothView™, is used to evaluate the mechanical integrity and hydraulic performance ...

Unrivalled combustion expertise - Superior heat transfer solutions

XRG Technologies is an innovative engineering and procurement firm specializing in fired equipment for the refining, petrochemical, and power markets. We collaborate with our partners to solve complex problems and manage projects from concept to completion. Our staff of industry experts will partner with you and function as your outside engineering support team. We have brought together a team of burner, fired heater, boiler, flare, vapor recovery and thermal oxidizer experts ...

Unrivalled combustion expertise, superior heat transfer solutions

XRG Technologies is an innovative engineering and procurement firm specializing in fired equipment for the refining, petrochemical, and power markets. We collaborate with our partners to solve complex problems and manage projects from concept to completion. Our staff of industry experts will partner with you and function as your outside engineering support team. We have brought together a team of burner, fired heater, boiler, flare, vapor recovery and thermal oxidizer experts ...

XRG Technologies, Services and Solutions

XRG Technologies is an innovative engineering and procurement firm focused on fired and unfired heat transfer equipment for the refining, petrochemical, and power markets. We collaborate with our partners to solve complex problems and manage projects from concept to completion. We have brought together a team of fired heater, burner, boiler, flare, and thermal oxidizer experts to create one centralized, go-to engineering firm for all your process equipment needs.

Xtend by XRG - A better technology for heat transfer

Fired Heater Fouling Costs Millions. A typical 100,000 barrel per day refinery loses $3-7 million annually because of fouling in fired heaters. Fouling overheats tubes, increases firing rate, reduces yields, and causes lost onstream days. Shutting down a crude, vacuum, or coker heater is extremely costly both in labor and throughput. To combat these issues, XRG Technologies developed Xtend - a tube-insert to reduce fouling and increase heat transfer. Xtend - A Better Technology ...