Improving Refinery Fuel Gas Composition

By Process Pro Eric

May 15, 2017
Basic principles to optimize refinery fuel gas systems.
inShar e

Do you ever hear operators complaining about refinery fuel gas being too
lean? Do your process engineers ever tell you that your furnaces are duty
limited because the fuel gas valves are saturated?

Im sure that every refinery engineer has seen an operator just dump more LPG into
the fuel gas system at one point in time or another. You, yourself, may have even gotten
comfortable with this lazy habit. If your refinery engages in this type of activity
without fully scrutinizing the fuel gas content, you may be wasting millions of
dollars each year out of plain stupidity.

Lets first review some basic chemical properties of molecules the table below
compare heating content of various hydrocarbons.

Higher Heating Value

Moleclue (BTU/SCF)

Nitrogen (N2) 0
Hydrogen (H2) 325
Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) 635
Methane (C1) 1000
Ethane (C2) 1770
Propane (C3) 2520
Butane (C4) 3265
Pentane (C5) 4010

As youll intuitively guess, the caloric content of hydrocarbons increase as the size
of the molecules increase. Also note that inert molecules, such as nitrogen, have no
heating value. True, most 8th grade chemistry students recognize this fact;
however, many engineers do not connect the dots when it comes to optimizing the
refinery fuel gas system.

So lets compare heating values to understand why molecular analysis is

important. Hydrogen has a volumetric heating value that is one-third that of
methane (325 vs 1000 BTU/SCF). Resultantly, a refinery will need 3-times
higher volumetric flow of hydrogen to match an equivalent duty of methane.

With such a disparity in heating value between molecules, you can easily imagine
how hydrogen-rich fuel gas streams can hydraulically constrain refinery fuel gas
flow before achieving the desired heat transfer rate.

Most refinery fuel gas systems operate with a heating value between 900 1100
BTU/SCF. Lower than 900 means that your system is too lean, and greater than
1100 means that your system is too rich. Either end of the spectrum will cost you
money, except managers only notice it when you are too lean. With misleading refinery
KPIssuch as utilization, lean fuel gas will attract attention because unit throughputs
will be affected. Excessively rich fuel gas may cost your refinery more money, but
many managers do not understand the value of LPG recovery.

Fuel Gas too Lean?

The two most common culprits to lean

refinery fuel gas are having too
much hydrogen and having too
much nitrogen. Improving both factors
have a high pay-off for refinery
profitability.

Recovering hydrogen from the fuel

gassystem can be challenging on many
levels, but this does not mean that you
should
neglect it. Beyond diluting the fuel gas system, hydrogen can have high value to
refineries constrained by hydrogen availability. Common reasons for having
excess hydrogen are:

Un-metered hydrogen streams routed to fuel gas system

Non-sampled hydrogen streams routed to fuel gas system
Sub-optimized hydrogen stream routings
Inadequate catalyst activity monitoring on hydrotreater reactors
Unclear ownership of the hydrogen system
Unclear ownership of the fuel gas system

Un-metered and non-analyzed hydrogen containing streams pose a challenge

because refineries cannot improve what they cannot measure. One cannot
determine whether the flow rate is high or low, and one surely cannot tell what the
hydrogen concentration is. Before deciding what to do with a stream, one must
first understand what it is.

Stream routing management is the next step to improving fuel gas quality. After
measuring stream composition and flow-rates, one can decide the viability of
stream re-routing. One common routing optimization is to cascade hydrogen off-
gas flow from a higher pressure unit to a lower pressure unit. This can save a
refinery from bleeding hydrogen twice to the fuel gas system if adequate hydrogen
partial pressure can be achieved in downstream hydrotreater reactors. Another routing
optimization is to send hydrogen rich gas to a H2 recovery system (i.e. PSA) to
separate hydrogen from the fuel gas.

Another variable often overlooked is the hydrogen bleed rate from a hydrotreater
reactor. New engineers do not know how to optimize reactor catalyst runlengths,
and often operate with more bleed rate than necessary. As this likely the case at
your refinery, a very low cost way to reduce hydrogen content in fuel gas is to just
reduce hydrogen bleed.

Regarding stewardship of refinery-wide systems, unclear ownership is surely a

common issue. In the two dozen refineries that I have been to, less than 10% have
engineers that have direct responsibility of the hydrogen or fuel gas system. Every
refinery employee has more work on their plate than manageable, so how can you
expect to improve a system that doesnt even have an owner?

As for reducing Nitrogen content in the fuel gas system, the same principles apply
similar to reducing hydrogen content. With an even lower heating value than
hydrogen, excess nitrogen surely has no place in the fuel gas system. If youre
looking for a place to start hunting tramp nitrogen, start scrutinizing nitrogen purge
gas rates.

Fuel Gas too Rich?

Whether you started off with rich fuel gas, or ended up there after removing low
heating value molecules, it is very important that you now focus on recovering the
high heating value molecules. As propane and butane often have higher value as
LPG product, it usually makes sense to maximize recovery of these streams.

The value of LPG recovery has been discussed numerous times previously, so Ill just
refer you to read those articles.

Before you start making regret decisions of vaporizing LPG or even modifying
burner tips, take a closer look at your fuel gas composition. You may find that
process changes elsewhere in the refinery can significantly improve the fuel gas
heating value, and will also result in higher refinery margin what a splendid
concept!