OCR Text |
Show Paper #19 Combustion R&D Needs in the Petroleum Refining Industry James G. Seebold, Chevron Corporation Engineering Technology Department P.O. Box 1627, Richmond, CA 94802-0627 American Flame Research Committee 1989 International Symposium on Combustion in Industrial Furnaces and Boilers Short Hills, New Jersey September 25-27, 1989 Fuel consumption dominates the annual operating cost of today's refinery and the petroleum industry alone accounts for 60 percent of the fuel used in industrial furnaces and boilers. Economic and environmental pressures are forcing greater emphasis on the traditional gaseous fuels and fuel use in the petroleum industry is not going to change much in the foreseeable future. Rather, the trend will be toward better utilization of the traditional gaseous fuels. We need to know how to burn today's fuels "better" -with greater efficiency and less pollution. We will discuss combustion R&D needs in low NOx burners, "ultra" low NOx burners, stack waste heat recovery, combustion aerodynamics, low Btu gas and waste incineration. Not long ago, energy seers, gazing off into the future and dreaming of things to come, managed to discern, looming grotesquely in the dawn of a new energy age, the spectral outline of . . . The Coal Fired Refinery. But today it is clear that the "energy future" -whatever you perceive or wish it to be -- has been pushed by the force of events well back over the horizon. The future is farther off than it used to be. The futures predictions of the seventies and early eighties simply have not panned out. The predicted massive shift toward alternative fuels has not occurred. In little over a decade the visionaries were caught both short and long by the difference between the logical future and the willed future, between predictions based upon smooth trends and the surprises created by people. The planner's favorite technique, the Simple extension of past trends, can hardly reveal surprises like embargoes, conservation and wars. Yet these surprises have disruptive consequences. More recently another surprise, sharply increased mid-East production, caused industry forecasters to envi$ion a surfeit of oil and soft prices for some time to come. Certainly it is not unreasonable to long for alternative fuel sources as a hedge against future shortages. But you don't stay in business long making for $100 what you might be able to sell for $20. Recently, when the member companies of the American Flame Research Committee were polled regarding their development needs, the area of least interest was coal. America may be "The Saudi Arabia of Coal," but tomorrow is going to have to wait for a while. The prospects for The Coal Fired Refinery in the foreseeable future are, as the movie title put it. less than zero. The EnYironmental Imperative Perhaps just as important as economics in thwarting the predicted shift toward alternate energies is the environmental imperative. In the San Joaquin Valley of California, for example, where thermally enhanced oil recovery plays a big role in America's domestic oil picture, there was a day not long ago when it seemed that generating steam by burning petroleum coke in fluid bed combustors was the future way to go. But today instead of the usual practice of fueling the "steamers" with recovered crude Oil. which makes great logistical sense but produces air pollutant emiSSions. there is a shift toward cleaner burning, less expensive. easier to use natural gas. In another example. in a refinery faced with mandated NOx reduction. we retrofitted fuelstaged low NOx gas burners in several large heaters and in so doing gave up the possibility of firing, say, heavy residual or any other fuel oil. The use of refinery fuel gas instead of fuel oil produces less NOx. of course, and the change to fuelstaged low NOx burners further reduces the generation of nitrogen oxides by up to two-thirds compared with standard gas burners. In a moment, I will explain why we had to give up 'uture" oil. But as a practical matter it is not that big a deal. In American refineries, overhead gas (plus make up natural gas) satisfies most of the fuel needs of the refinery. The consequence is that comparatively little fuel oil is fired. anyway. The environmental imperative suggests that even less |