Retrofitting Burner Management Systems At Existing Furnaces

Retrofitting Burner Management Systems at Existing Furnaces

This paper presents a pragmatic approach for how to retrofit and safely operate the firing system for an existing cracking furnace.

With respect to safety, the firing system needs to work inside a defined operating window. This has to be ensured at all times in order to avoid mis-operations such as uncontrolled combustion, under-stoichiometric combustion, unstable combustion, and over-firing. Operation outside the operating window could occur because of an operational human error, improper safety controls, or malfunctioning of the equipment. It appears that most furnace explosions occur during special operations like burner light-off and decoke operations.

This paper addresses how the firing system of an existing furnace can be retrofitted such that it complies with the intent of the EN 746-2 or equivalent standard.