(125b) Smart Damper Design Provides Better Control of Fired Heaters

Fired heaters are major consumers of energy in the Refining and Petrochemical Industries. In most of the natural draft fired heaters, one of the important parameters that is controlled by the operators is the furnace draft using stack dampers. Historically stack damper quality in the industry is very poor. The current design of the stack dampers is inadequate to control the draft effectively. As a result most of the stack dampers are left fully open in the industry. The average draft in the fired heaters is maintained at almost 3-4 times the value recommended causing a lot of tramp air in the system.

In this paper; we are going to talk about how our patent pending Smart Stack Dampers can ensure proper draft control in fired heaters. We have made several improvements in the design and construction of the dampers. Smart dampers are designed to be very reliable and operator friendly. They provide a much better control of the draft. Smart dampers can be configured for automatic or manual draft control of the heater