Processing facilities fired heaters

The BSD can either shut down the entire facility, or it can be designed for two levels of shutdown. The first level shuts down equipment such as compressors, lean oil pumps, and direct fired heaters, and either shuts in the process or diverts flow around the process by closing inlet/outlet block valves and opening bypass valves. The second level shuts down the remaining utilities and support facilities, including generators and electrical feeds. 

New Brunswick, Canada Process Facility—A fire originated in the feed heater of a hydrocracker and resulted in one fatality and significant damage to a Hydrocracking Unit. 

Many processes are heat driven, take place at elevated temperatures, or require product drying. As a result, process heaters and dryers are common equipment in processing facilities. Many of these are fired units fueled by a variety of gas or liquid fuels frequently by natural gas. They may be used to heat a process stream directly, to heat an intermediate heat transfer fluid, or to... 

A diagram of the pilot facility is shown in Figure 7. The sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water were metered, blended, and brought to temperature by a fired heater so that the mixture entered the reactor at a temperature and composition representative of the off-gas from the Bergbau Forschung process. The reactor of 2 cu ft volume contained a rice-size anthracite coal bed which moved downward slowly... 

The first part of the Information Manual provides an overview description of the process facility, what its primary functions and products are, and what those products are used for. The process overview can include information to do with the facility s location, its impact on the environment, and general public relations issues to do with the local community. An overview of meteorology data can be included in this section also. The overview will also provide a summary of the major equipment items such as distillation columns, fired heaters, compressors, pumps, and heat exchangers. A layout sketch for each level of the facility (or each deck of a platform) should be provided. 

From today s Process Safety Management perspective, we should say a lack of process safety culture prevailed. We should also say human factors and facility siting issues contributed to this incident. The gas-fired heater was originally adjacent to the process with no separation. The accidental heater fire destroyed adjacent process equipment at several levels of the structure. Detailed discussion on the human factors and the facility siting issues are beyond the scope of the one-minute modification... 

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