Controlling Steam-Assisted Flare Operations in Light of Federal Regulations

Paper from the AFRC 2013 conference titled Controlling Steam-Assisted Flare Operations in Light of Federal Regulations by Philip Smith

The difficulty of measuring combustion efficiency from flares has lead the EPA to promulgate procedural-based regulations rather than regulations based on achieving fuel emissions or combustion efficiency performance standards. These procedure-based regulations include the requirement to have an exit velocity below 18.3 m/s and a heating value above 11.2 MJ/scmi. In this paper we explore the efficacy of this regulation by using a high-performance computing (HPC), large-eddy simulation (LES) code previously validated to predict combustion efficiencies within 0.3% to examine a prototypical steam-assisted flare operating with fuels being fed under a range of exit velocities and heating values. The resulting combustion efficiency and unburned hydrocarbon emissions are analyzed in light of the federal regulation.