Furnace Safe Park DCS Tool

Properly managing the shutdown or “safe parking” of multiple steam-cracking furnaces during a plant-wide upset can be challenging. Alarm flood and multiple competing demands on operators are characteristics of such situations. The ExxonMobil Beaumont olefins plant has created a DCS interface to assist operators execute a controlled feed-out of furnaces during a plant-wide event. The interface provides a summary view of vital furnace status information, and proposes a re-feeding hierarchy based on coil age, runlength, and operating conditions. Examples of the DCS interface are provided and discussed.