HOT OIL Special edition s October 2005 Since it was founded ENERGIA has been working in thermal fluid market producing conventional coil heaters as well as box type side wall fired heaters bringing this unique and patented design to the excellence. The success on the market is witnessed by more than 5000 heaters installed all over the world for different applications since has been able to match TRADITION with INNOVATION. The crude oil price and the market globalisation pushed the companies to invest in pipelines projects. was awarded of several large size heaters (over 25 MW package capacity) for crude oil pumping stations both with ASME as well as with DIN 4754 design. The crude oil price and the market globalisation also enhanced the extraction and utilisation of natural gas and the production of LPG (liquid petroleum gas). ENERGIA got orders for heaters application in the gas treatment as well as LPG production demonstrating the capacity to follow the markets trends and relevant technological developments. Despite to the message from the worldwide PET market that little capacity will be added this year, ENERGIA got an important order consisting in 3 of large thermal fluid horizontal box type HTH vaporizers from Chemtex Engineering belonging to M&G Group, the 2 nd worldwide larger manufacturer of PET resin, for the new worldwide largest production line in Brazil. Finally Radici Chimica in Novara (Italy) awarded with an order consisting in 2 off vertical coil thermal fluid heaters (OMV) that shall be dedicated to the production of synthetic fibre PA 6 & 66. Once more is demonstrating that its marketing presence offering traditional vertical coil design OMV fluid heaters as well as innovative horizontal box type HTH technical solution are winning factors in the global world market competition. ENERGIA SpA Via Resistenza, 12 20068 Peschiera Borromeo Milano - Italia www. bono.it sales.bono.en@bono.it 1
Hot Oil Systems for Crude Oil Pumping Stations Pipelines move nearly two-thirds of the crude oil transported annually in the world. Pipelines are, by far, the most important petroleum supply line, including crude oil, refined fuel and derived materials. Because of the volume that must be transported, pipelines are the only feasible method for moving enormous quantities of crude oil from oil fields and coastal shipping terminals to refineries. Pump stations, powered by diesel engines, are needed to move these viscous fluids: they are installed on the pipelines, usually spaced every 50 to 60 kilometres. Each of them is completed with heaters that will warm up the crude oil entering the pumping station and keep the relevant tanks at a constant temperature. ENERGIA, which bears more than thirty years of experience in the supply of Hot Oil equipment, has been recently awarded for a contract involving the supply of eight Hot Oil heaters to be installed in four crude oil pumping stations. 2 The article describes this installation philosophy for Hot Oil system to operate in critical environment, granting high reliability and minimising unsafe conditions. The Hot Oil heating system described here has been delivered for the application in a crude oil pumping station located in a desert area in which the supply of electricity from the grid and the availability of water is critical. The utilities (compressors, pumps, etc.) are supplied with electricity by generators that use diesel engines. The environmental conditions are to be considered as the most severe due to desert storms and maximum ambient temperature. These heaters are designed in order to raise the crude oil s inlet temperature from 40 C to 70 C at an average pressure of 50 barg, at a flow rate of about 240.000 barrels per day. As a consequence of the remote installation, all the required utilities for the normal operation of the heating system have to be optimised and high-efficiency equipment must be used.
One of the main benefits in adopting heating system based on synthetic thermal fluids (also called Hot Oil) is the minimisation of the piping design for the interconnection between the heater and the crude oil exchanger. As a matter of fact, in comparison with other traditional heating systems based on steam, the Hot Oil system is comparably more simple in installation and doesn t require expensive pressurised plants, extensive safe measures and preparation of the heat carrier. For this case, a Hot Oil temperature of 280 C has been adopted (the equivalent steam system should involve a 65 bars network). The design pressure of the interconnecting piping has been kept under 12 bars. The core of the Hot Oil System is the heater that - for this application - relays on the patented, highcapacity and proven HTH model. The total heat required for each of the pumping stations, in order to achieve the required crude oil heating, is supplied by two 25MW Hot Oil heaters, with a spare philosophy. Complete engineering of Hot Oil Area ENERGIA has been called to deliver the complete design of the Hot Oil system, becoming responsible for the safe and reliable supply of heat to the crude oil tank. The required know how has been developed through the design of Hot Oil systems for the most important international engineering companies worldwide. The system has been designed for a further expansion involving three 25MW Hot Oil heaters for a total process capacity of 50MW (one heater is kept as spare). As of today ENERGIA has successfully delivered more than 5.000 Hot Oil heaters (more than 900 with a heat capacity greater than 10MW). Through the years ENERGIA has also developed, in conjunction with main thermal fluid suppliers, a complete engineering capability to design all auxiliary components (expansion tank, drain tank, storage tank, Hot Oil circulation pumps, piping design etc.) in order to assure no damage of the heating medium. This is a very sensitive point, since the cost of the heating medium can represent up to one fifth of the total installation cost. Although the degradation of the Hot Oil is mainly related to an incorrect design of the heater (overcharge of heat flux in the combustion chamber), damage of the Hot Oil occurs in case of wrong design of the expansion tank (oxidation of the oil). In order to reduce all possible oil degradations, an horizontal e- xpansion tank design has been adopted, with nitrogen pressurisation system. Nitrogen has also been used for the blanketing of the drain and storage tank to prevent possible ignition of the Hot Oil in case of emergency drain of the plant. 3
This view change has been supported both by the high quality standard and proven service of ASME designed heaters and from an economical consideration - due to lower installation costs. As a pumping station is usually installed in a remote area, the possibility to deliver a complete Hot Oil heater, with high thermal capacity, in a package configuration minimises the site works: this doubles the benefits, reducing erection costs and quickening the plant start up. As typical example, the HTH heater package is delivered with a built-in air pre-heater (required for improvement of the heater efficiency) instead of the usual stand-alone air pre-heater that has to be site installed in vertical heaters configuration. The possibility to deliver the air pre-heater within the package also minimises all the air and flue gas ducting, reducing the overall erection time. The design with a horizontally-fired burner has been chosen instead of the vertical solution in order to keep all sensible instrumentation for normal operation within a restricted and protected area. This proven design grants that the environmental conditions will not affect the functionality of electronic control systems when exposed to sandstorms and extreme sunshine. The horizontal design also allows for complete and easy access to all operation devices: the operator can easily access the heaters, thus minimising the downtimes in case of malfunction. In the horizontal design solution there is no need for major steel structures - for support and access - required for the vertical units. Since in pumping stations there is a high availability of crude oil, this has been adopted as fuel for the Hot Oil heaters. Since the crude oil contains a high percentage of wax (about 32% in weigh) particular care has been taken in the correct design of both the burner and the crude oil combustion pumping system. The HTH 25MW heaters have been designed with three inspection doors in the convection side and one for the complete frontal accessibility to the combustion chamber in order to grant a complete cleaning procedure. 4
complete removal of particulates has to be carried out through an off-line cleaning operation. The HTH horizontal design assures the minimisation of the shut-off. The crude oil pumping station is supervised by a DCS (Distributed Control System) that will receive information from the HTH s control system. Each heater is equipped with a Burner Management System and a PLC-based control with a redundant communication port. Moreover, for each of the convection inspection doors, three compressed air soot blowers have been installed. As the re-heating of the crude oil in the pumping station is essential to grant the operation of the entire pipeline, the Hot Oil system must function all the time. The design solution is based on Hot Oil heater redundancy: two heaters are installed, one working and one as spare, always kept in a standby mode. The standby mode, realized using small Hot Oil flow rate from the system through a dedicated bypass line. In case of a fault of communications between the HTH control and the DCS, the control system will continue to grant the safe and normal operation of the heater. This control has been entirely developed by ENERGIA adapting to the specific Hot Oil application a well-proven combustion control system used for the complete range of s boilers: this is based on the electronic control of the combustion air and of crude oil, with a complete closed-loop system for the oxygen. A touch-screen panel allows for easy and intuitive regulation and monitoring of the HTH heaters. The Total Availability criteria has to meet three basic requirements. 1 - In a remote installation the troubleshooting must be fast and simple. 2 - The cost related for non-operating a pipeline - due to the fault of one component is enormous. 3 - The possibility to regularly maintain the heaters is mandatory: when firing crude oil for a long time a Hot Oil heater Control System 5
PET Hot Oil Heaters awarded from CHEMTEX INT L for brasilian ESTRELA M&G new PET plant ENERGIA Hot Oil Heaters (Series HTH) have been successfully supplied to PET producers for over 15 years. This gives to ENERGIA a consolidated position in the PET production especially when hot oil in vapor phase is adopted (typical Du Pont Process). ENERGIA is in fact one of the few approved supplier from DuPont. Chemtex engineering company of M&G group, one of the biggest technologically advanced multinational company based in italy, awarded ENERGIA for the supply of N 3 Hot Oil Heaters for a new PET Plant to be installed in Estrela-Brazil. The supply of ENERGIA consists in N 3 hot oil heaters, 16,3 MW each, firing fuel gas. The hot oil temperature leaving the heater reaches about 371 C in liquid phase to became vapor in a dedicated flash tank at 3,5 barg. 6 One of the key points which leading M&G/CHEMTEX to decide for the purchase of hot oil heaters from our company has to be found in the great experience that Bono has gained in various field of hot oil plants, supplying a high number of HTH horizontal package heaters operating with both liquid and vapor/liquid phase hot oil and our capability to deliver not only the heaters but also all the related engineering for the completion of the vaporization area (i.e. flash tank, hot oil piping, duct works, hot oil pumps specification etc). More than 30 hot oil heaters have been delivered by to M&G group with great client satisfaction once more confirming the reliability and capability of the main Italian producer of thermal fluid heaters.
Thermal Fluid Heaters for LPG separation, treatment and storage. In a scenario where STEG Societè Tunisienne Exploitation du Gaz (the North African company for the production & distribution of the gas) was investing in the expansion of the Gabes production facility, INDUSTRIE TECNOFRIGO DELL ORTO (an Italian company belonging to GEA Group), got the contract for the turn Key supply of a plant able to produce LPG from natural gas and condensed hydrocarbons from streams coming from the south of Tunisia. The process is basically consisting in 2 phases: condensation and controlled distillation of the processed gas. Therefore the process re-boilers are heated by thermal fluid while a small hot oil utility is needed for the dehydrator. ENERGIA will supply 2 thermal fluid heaters (rating 6.6 MW horizontal sidewall fired OMP type for the gas re-boiler & 0.5 MW vertical coil type OMV for dehydrator) complete with control systems engineering of the area. The specified working temperature is 280 C by far within the standard production range of the captioned heaters. STEG checked the performances of some thermal fluid heaters in other Tunisian companies and was aware of the consistency of previous supplies. It was mandatory for to provide a competitive offer in order to strengthen its leading position in the Tunisian market and for client full satisfaction. The local presence of in Tunisia with an efficient local service centre able to satisfy the most demanding request for the end-user has been considered of primary importance for bid evaluation. The plant performances were guaranteed in terms of process, availability and utilities consumptions. 7
8 POLISTYRENE Hot Oil Heater for Polistyrene application for PENOPLEX Kirishi Russia to TOYO ENGINEERING Corp. Japan Plastic material has become more and more important in every day life in the industrialized counties as well as in developing ones. ENERGIA has been very active in the PET resin application supplying numerous plants both in liquid phase as well as in vapor phase for this application. Nevertheless there are other important chemical process requiring high temperatures suitable for s HTH (high temperature heater) application. Polistyrene is a rather new material becoming more and more important in the engineering plastic markets for insulation application ENERGIA supplied a complete thermal fluid heater 4,5 MW capacity to PENOPLEX in Russia, close to S.Petersburg for polistyrene application. This project took in consideration the extreme environmental temperatures conditions (-49 C + 35 C ) on site and the total availability to be granted during the operations of the heater. Special materials, double fan for the burner as well as fully protected and heated instrumentation have been adopted to mach the extreme working conditions. The process is delivering, as by product, a styrene liquid stream (ACC-EB: Accumulated Ethil Benzene) that had to be incinerated in the heater during the combustion in combination with fuel oil. Here below the chemical analysis of the ACC-EB. The perfect and contemporary combustion of the ACC-EB and fuel oil has been studied taking in consideration that styrene liquid oxidation is difficult due to the long chain link of the basic chemical components. Therefore ENERGIA studied a special burner and integrated the furnace with a dedicated refractory lined cylinder able to avoid the rapid flame radiation temperature degradation due to walls heat absorbtion. The full combustion of the styrene stream is enhanced by prolonged high temperature conditions. All the required and contractual obligations where easily matched as well as emission limits in terms of Nox, CO, and dust components. COMPONENT Units STYRENE C8H8 % wt 80,4 ETHILBENZENE C8H10 % wt 18,0 OLYGOMERS C16H18 - C24H26 - C32H34 % wt 1,6 LHV Kcal/kg 9790