Originally appeared in: International PETROLEUM REFINING

July 2009 issue, pgs 35-39 Reprinted with publishers permission.

A New Approach to Improving Heater Efficiency

By Ashutosh Garg, Furnace Improvements
Fired heaters are important equipment in any Refinery or Chemical plant. In the USA , we have about 155 refineries operating today. The estimated number of heaters in the refining industry is about 3200. A major refinery may have about 20 to 40 heaters depending upon the size and complexity. There are about 1400 heaters in the Chemical Industry. Half of these heaters are in high temperature pyrolysis service for making ethylene and propylene. About a quarter of these heaters are in Steam Reforming of hydrocarbon. All the major industries are highly energy intensive. A typical refinery of 100,000 BPD size would be consuming almost 1.84 Billion Btu/hr and the fuel bill is close to 100 Million Dollars. Even a 1 % efficiency improvement will add about a million dollars to the bottom line of the heater. It is our experience that about 1-2% efficiency improvement can be accomplished with just good house keeping without any major capital investment. Typically in a fired heater, the feed is preheated in the convection section and is further heated in the radiant section. Figure 1 shows a typical 4 pass heater with feed being heated from 450 to 600 F. Fuel gas or oil is burned in the radi-

FIS has developed a new approach to improve heater efficiency that cuts down the cost of revamp by to 1/3 and improves the payout significantly.

ant section and produces a temperature of about 3200 F. The flue gas temperature leaving the radiant section is 1650 F. About 2/3 of the heat duty is absorbed in the radiant section and the rest is absorbed in the convection section. In the convection section, flue gases are cooled to 750 F . The estimated thermal efficiency of this heater is about 80%. If we want to improve the efficiency of the fired heaters in a conventional way, then the most common way is to reduce the flue gas temperature approach to the inlet fluid temperature. In Figure 2 we are showing that an additional convection section is installed in series to the existing convection section. This is fine for most of the applications but it does have a drawback. The pressure drop on the fluid side goes up. In a num-

Flue gas

750 F

Flue gas

1,650 F

Flue gas

500 F Flue gas

750 F

Flue gas

1,650 F

Feed In 450 F

500 F Convection Section Radiant Section

Feed Out 600 F

500 F Additional Radiant Section Convection Convection Section Section 450 F

Feed Out 600 F

Flue gas

1,650 F

Flue gas

3,200 F

Flue gas 750 F Flue gas 1,650 F

Flue gas

3,200 F

Figure 1.Typical 4 pass heater with feed being heated from 450 to 600 F
1

Figure 2. Conventional scheme for improve the

efficiency

PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVEMENT
Flue gas Split Flow in 450 F 500 F Split Flow out 600 F

DESIGN MODIFICATION

Convection Section- II Flue gas

Flue gas

750 F

Flue gas

1,650 F

Feed In 450 F

Convection Section - I

500 F

Radiant Section

Feed Out 600 F

Flue gas

1,650 F

Flue gas

3,200 F

pressure drop is a very important parameter and lower pressure drop helps save power on recycle gas compressor as well as improve the yield of the unit. In these heaters, fluid is heated mostly in the radiant section. The radiant coil consists of a number of parallel passes leading to the low pressure drop. Convection section consists of waste heat recovery which could be hydrocarbon preheating or steam generation. Our patented split flow process is very suitable for this service as the feed can be easily split and sent to the radiant and convection section at the same time (Figure 4). Case study A Refinery had a reformer heater in their facility. In Jan. 2000, the fuel gas prices touched $10 per MSCF. The client started a project to improve efficiency of the heater. The stack temperature in this heater was 1100 F. The refinery did not want to generate steam as they have enough in their facility. They did not want an air preheating system due to side fired burners and complications associated with them. They had tried installing air preheater about 20 years ago during the first energy crunch but did not install the system as it became complicated. The heater duty was 158 MMBtu/hr out of which 120 MMBtu/hr were used to heat the process streams in the radiant section. The convection section consisted of splitter reboiler service and stabilizer reboiler service. The firing rate was around 234 MMBtu/hr and the thermal efficiency was around 67% (Table 1). The heater was a bottleneck in the plant and was limiting the capacity. The client could not fire it any harder because it would exceed the permitted firing limit. In the scheme of the Reformer heater before the revamp, the radiant section consisted of four radiant cells separated by bridgewalls. The burners were installed on the end walls. The radiant tubes were U shaped in the first two cells. Each process stream had a large 26 inch inlet and outlet manifold. There were 44 parallel coils or tubes in each coil. Feed was entering the heater at 840 F and was heated to 1010 F in the radiant section. The Reboiler process streams recov-

Figure 3. FIS Split Flow* scheme to improve the

efficiency of the heater

*Patented

ber of plants, it is not possible to increase the pressure drop across the heater as that will require upgrading the pump and motor, may also need to change the piping class. Our patented scheme called Split Flow (Figure 3) divides the flow entering the heater into two streams- the main stream and the split stream. We send about 10-20% of the flow to the split stream and heat it to the outlet temperature. The main stream continues to go the existing convection section and radiant coils. The major advantage of this scheme is the reduction in pressure drop. As compared to the series flow which increases the pressure drop across the heater, in split flow we see a reduction in pressure drop across the heater coil. This offers a significant advantage in pressure drop limited heaters or the heaters that are already running at the maximum charge rate. In current times, it is fairly common to have heaters operating at maximum capacity. One of the major building blocks in refineries is the catalytic reforming unit, which is used to upgrade the octane number of gasoline. It is known by different trade names as Rheniforming, Powerforming, Platforming etc. In this unit, the

250F

750F

250F

400F Waste Heat Recovery Unit 1,100F Split Flow Out Process Feed Out

750F

Waste Heat Recovery Unit Process Feed Out

1,600F 1000F

Split Flow in Process Feed In

Process Feed In

1,600F

Table 1
Parameter Total Heater Duty Radiant Heat Duty (Process) Convection Heat Duty Firing Rate Efficiency Operating Value MMBtu/hr 158 MMBtu/hr 120.09 MMBtu/hr 37.91 MMBtu/hr 234 % 67.5 Units

Figure 4. Scheme of a reformer heater with

2

(right) and without (left) the Split Flow technology.

DESIGN MODIFICATION
STACK

PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVEMENT
Stack In In #2 In #1 Out Out #3 In #3 Out Stack Stack Out #4 In #4 Out

DAMPER

#1 In

#2 Out

CONVECTION SECTION

INLET

OUTLET INLET

OUTLET

INLET

OUTLET

INLET

Burners

OUTLET

Figure 7. FIS Split Flow Scheme. Patented technology.

sure drop across went up by 50%. The conventional design is shown in Figure 6. In order to keep the pressure drop low, the number of parallel passes had to be increased in the convection section leading to very wide convection sections. Since all the feed had to be heated in series , it required large pipe sizes. The pipe design becomes difficult as the temperatures are high and thermal expansion needs to be taken care of. The heater foundation could not sustain the new convection section loads. A grade mounted stack had to be installed. The conventional efficiency improvement scheme suffered from the following disadvantages. The process side pressure drop went up. The large piping size was required to keep pressure drop low. Due to the large convection sections and grade mounted stack, the cost of the scheme was estimated at 6 million Dollars. Split flow technique divides the process fluid into two streams (Figure 7). The convection section heats approximately 25 30% of the total flow and the rest is heated by the radiant section to the same temperature. The exiting fluids from both sections are then combined into one stream. In the split flow design for this reformer
STACK

Figure 5. Reformer heater before the revamp.

ered heat from flue gases in the three convection sections. They were entering the convection section at 428 F and 459 F respectively. The existing heater consists of 3 separate convection sections and 3 stacks (Figure 5). This heater design is very old and new heaters have single convection sections. The convection sections were of different size, first one was 4 tubes wide, second was 6 tubes wide and the third one was only 2 tubes wide. Radiant section was divided by bridge walls. The stack dampers in the stack were not working well. The conventional design would be to preheat the process fluid in the convection section first and then send it to the radiant section. In this design, the heat is recovered by the feed in the convection section and then by the reboiler coils. This would have improved the efficiency to the desired level of 86%. The major disadvantage was an increase in pressure drop across each coil. Due to inherent construction of the convection section with multiple return bends in the convection coil, the pres-

DAMPER

REBOILER COIL

CONVECTION SECTION

PROCES S COIL

INLET

OUTLET

INLET

OUTLET

INLET

OUTLET

RADIANT SECTION

INLET
OUTLET

Figure 6. Conventional design for efficiency improvement. 3

Figure 8. Revamp of the reformer heater with

the Split Flow technology.

PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVEMENT
Table 2
Parameter Pressure Drop, psi Firebox temperature, F Original Design 3.1 1,615 Split flow Design 2.1 1,551 15,047 1,120 82.65 Item Capacity, BPD

DESIGN MODIFICATION

Table 3
Before Revamp 18,500 158 234 67.5 1,092 After Revamp 24,000 194.5 225 86.6 478

Radiant flux, Btu/hr ft 19,823 Radiant tube metal temp, F 1,151 Firing rate, MMBtu/hr 116.35

Heat Duty, MMBtu/hr Heat Release, MMBtu/hr Efficiency, % Stack Temp., F Fuel Savings, $/annum

heater (Figure 8), the convection sections are narrower and lighter and as a result could be supported on the existing heater structure with minor reinforcements. The split flow piping is smaller. We used only 16-18 inch pipe size as compared to 26 inch pipe in the conventional scheme. The stacks could be reused after the new dampers were installed on the stacks. The flow to the split coil was controlled using restriction orifices in each split flow line. This way the pressure drop was balanced. Table 2 compares the performance of the heater before and after the revamp. This data shows that the pressure drop across the cell 1 went down from 3.1 to 2.1 psi. It would have gone up by 50% in the conventional scheme. The reduction in pressure drop was a significant benefit to the client for yield improvement. The firebox temperature was reduced from 1615 to 1551 F. The radiant flux decreased from 20000 Btu/hr ft 2

5.8 Million* *Based on $6.0 / MM Btu

to 15000 Btu/hr ft2. The tube metal temperature went down by 30 F. The firing rate went down by 33%. Table 3 compares some of the most important parameters in the heaters operation before and after the revamp. As you can see, with the split flow technology, the heater was able to process 24,000 BPD of feed, up from 18,500 BPD. The heat duty was up by 20% and yet the firing stayed the same. Efficiency of the heater was increased by almost 20%. The stack temperature was reduced by 600 F. The project payout in less than 6 months. Figure 9 shows the reformer before revamp and after revamp. The Split flow technique provides efficient solutions to pressure drop and capacity problems. It provides an inexpensive efficient alternative with a short payback time.

Figure 9.

The Reformer Heater before (left) and after (right) the FIS Split Flow revamp for efficiency improvements.

The Author
Ashutosh Garg is currently working as a Thermal Engineer at Furnaces Improvements in Sugar Land, TX. He has more than 35 years of experience in design, engineering and troubleshooting of furnaces and combustion systems for the refining and petrochemical industries. He graduated from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, in chemical engineering in 1974. He started as a graduate engineer in an ammonia plant. This was followed by six years in KTI India and eight years at EIL, New Delhi, in the heater group. He joined KTI Corp., San Dimas, California, in 1990, and moved to Houston in 1992. He has published several articles on fired heaters and burners in trade magazines. He is a registered professional engineer and a member of AIChE, API & ASME.

*Reproduced with the permission of International PETROLEUM REFINING.