(44b) New Approached Used to Redesign & Optimize the Flare In Petrochemical Plant

The United (SABIC affiliate) is design to produce number of petrochemicals, which have different in nature. Every element/compound reactivity has vary to other. Selection of right process and operation with computability of fluid and process conditions. Wrong design & selection will not only disturb the operation but also can be catastrophic. One of the olefin plant is design is produce number of valuable products and rest of heavier product divert to the another SABIC affiliate for further processing. Outage/upset/emergencies of heavier olefins product users plant will force to company to divert this product to the flare. After the few flare events, the operation started to face the some backpressure issues at plant battery limit, later that turn severe. During schedule shutdown, the two flare tips found damaged, especially the last two as well as the some sticky material found in from knock drum till flare sub header assembly. Further investigation and study found the number of reveal about the system. The system have additional injection utilities, we cause such polymerization, which actually not considered during design. The flare system had design with conventional approach. Since the actual design had not considered proper tactics, which ultimately cause downstream equipment failure. By using facts from the investigation, the new approach have developed and used to redesign the complete unit. Which have completely removed the situation and overcome the problem. The approach were used to synchronize two Aspen softwares and interconnected the properties. First time, the reactor & associated utilities used to design the KO vessel and complete flare downstream equipments with synchronization with flare net. With such approach and correction, we have enhanced the complete flare system and life of equipments. The company plant emergency shutdown threat have removed due to high backpressure and keep plant on smooth operation. Those improvement ultimately save the major production, maintenance and replacement cost as well as enhance sustainability & reliability figures.