Fired Heater Assessment

Fired heaters operate under very severe conditions, which make reliability and safety the highest priority. High reliability leads to higher performance and longer life. At the same time, efficient operation of fired heaters can improve fuel efficiency. Proper design and operation can achieve both high reliability and energy effieiency. 

Due to the fact that fired heaters operate under severe conditions, fired heaters are designed with careful consideration of the high-temperature characteristics of 

Energy and Process Optimization for the Process Industries, First Edition. Frank (Xin X.) Zhu. 

FIGURE 5.1. Schematic view of a t5fpical process fired heater. 

Therefore, maintaining a fired heater in rehable operation is the highest priority. With this priority in place, process plants can strive to maximize fired heater efficiency and hence reduce its running costs. This is because of a simple fact, fired heaters are the largest energy consumers in process plants and accounts for majority of total energy use. 

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In this section, we will discuss the critical issues that a highly reliable fired heater must acquire and shed light on the fundamentals for these features so that they can be used as the benchmark for assessing a fired heater. The critical reliability issues are discussed below. 

Assessment procedures for fired heaters prior to shutdown... 

Most electrical equipment either sparks in normal operation or is liable to spark under fault conditions. Some electrical appliances such as electric heaters, are specifically designed to produce high temperatures. These circumstances create fire and explosion hazards, which demand very careful assessment in locations where processes capable of producing flammable concentrations of gas or vapour are used, or where flammable liquids are stored. 

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