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CAT CRACKER SEMINAR TRANSCRIPT August 8-9, 2000 Houston, Texas

N A T I O N A L P E T R O C H E M I CAL & R E F I N E R S A S S O C I A T I O N
SUITE 1000 # 1899 L STREET, N.W. # WASHINGTON, DC 20036

NPRA CAT CRACKER SEMINAR AUGUST 8-9, 2000 HOUSTON, TEXAS


TABLE OF CONTENTS Panelists..................................................................................... ii Refractory, Materials, Internals, Expansion Joints, and Slide Valves .........................................................................................3 Rotating Equipment................................................................32 Turnaround/Maintenance/Inspection....................................40 Process/Performance Related Issues......................................51 Exhibitors ................................................................................61

IMPORTANT NOTICE
The information and statements herein are believed to be reliable but are not to be construed as a warranty or representation for which the participants assume legal responsibility. Users should undertake sufficient verification and testing to determine the suitability for their own particular purpose of any information or products referred to herein. NO WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE IS MADE. Nothing herein is to be taken as permission, inducement, or recommendation to practice any patented invention without a license.

PANELISTS

Larry Carper

FCCU Mechanical Equipment Consultant BP Amoco Naperville, IL President Shared Systems Technology Thorofare, NJ Engineering Advisor Reliability & Process Safety Westhollow Technology Center Equilon Enterprises LLC Houston, TX FCC Technical Services Manager Kellogg Brown & Root Houston, TX Reliability Engineer Sunoco, Inc. Toledo, OH Process Engineer Williams Refining LLC Memphis, TN

Frank DeMartino

Mike Drosjack

C. J. Farley

Jim Marlowe

Spence Cousar

ii

2000 Cat Cracker Seminar


Adams-Mark Hotel Houston, TX August 8-9, 2000

CRAIL: Good afternoon. Id like to welcome you to the 2000 Cat Cracker Seminar. I want to thank you all for coming. My name is Jerry Crail of Equilon LLC and I am the chairman of this years seminar. First, I want to welcome everybody. I think we have a record turnout this year, which is great. I hope everyone finds this seminar as fruitful as it has been in the past, and after looking at the agenda I am sure it will be. To start with, I'd like to introduce some of the committee members - the ones that have worked very hard to put on this seminar. They are Jon Carlson of Koch Petroleum, Fred Collier of Williams Energy, Shailendra Gupta of BP, Pat Lysaght of Marathon Ashland, and Charlie Pauls of Cooperative Refining. If you're here, could you stand up? I'd like to thank them again for their fine work. [applause] I'd also like to thank the NPRA staff that has worked very hard to make all of these arrangements for the meeting facilities and the tabletop area. They are Jeff Hazle, Yvette Brooks, Stacy Lane and Kelly Healy. If you're around, could you stand up? [applause] Thank you. I also want to thank the exhibitors. This is the first year of having a larger exhibit hall, and I want to thank them for putting on, from what I can see, a fantastic tabletop show, and I hope you all appreciate it. I think their participation is one of the things that will really make this conference one that's worthwhile to everyone. I'm looking forward to the agenda. We're going to start off today with a Q&A Session, and we have the panelists here. We'll talk to them in a minute. Tomorrow, we will have the workshops and there will be a series of them with six starting in the morning, and six more in the afternoon. As you will notice, some of them are repeated, which will enable people to go to different workshops. The tabletop exhibit will be open this evening after the Q&A Session. It will also be open tomorrow morning, and tomorrow morning we will have coffee, and that will only be coffee - there will not be any continental breakfast. The tabletop will also be open tomorrow at lunch for you to see all of the fine things they have out there. Also, the transcripts of the last two Cat Cracker Q & A Sessions are available. For those of you that attended the meeting two years ago, you should have received your copy by mail within the last week. If you have not received the 1996 or 1998, you can pick them up at the NPRA registration desk. With that, I'd like to go ahead and start the conference and turn it over to Jeff Hazle for the Q&A. HAZLE: Thank you, Jerry, for introducing the Q&A Session. We're employing the usual Q&A format where we solicit questions from past attendees of these conferences. The Program Committee puts together a panel of experts, who then edit those questions submitted to NPRA and select the ones that they will use in the session. The Panelists then prepare their responses, often consulting other people in the places where they work, and put their answers together. This 1

year, we have tried to organize the answers as much as possible in the following way: The first responder will give some background on the question. The second responder will describe how the problem was addressed initially, and then the third responder, if there is one, will talk about how the solution to the problem has evolved as technology has advanced. We have a different stage setting this year. Hopefully, its more informal, and more conversational. It is intended to represent a dialogue with you, the attendees, and the panel. As usual, the session will be recorded and a transcript will be made. For that reason, we ask that you use the microphone when you address questions to the panel. We have microphones in both aisles and one in the back. We also have people who will be carrying the microphones to you, so if you have a question to ask of the panel, raise your hand, and somebody will bring the microphone to you. When they do that, if you would, please state your name and affiliation, and hand a business card to the microphone handler, because when we finish the transcript, we will mail it out to everybody who speaks, and you will have a chance to edit your comments, if necessary, or make changes - make sure we understood what your question was. As usual, there is a disclaimer for this. The panel is representing their experiences. There is no legal responsibility or liability that goes along with their answers. Anything that you hear here, of course, you need to test to see whether or not its appropriate for your own facility. With that, we will introduce the panelists. I will ask each of them to describe the kind of FCC units that they work with, and then well go to the questions. Next to me is Mike Drosjack with Equilon. Mike? DROSJACK: Hi. Im with Equilon Enterprises, which was formed by Shell and Texacos refining arms a couple of years ago. Im in the Westhollow Technology Center, which is up the road here, in Houston, and we provide support to the various refining locations we have. My particular function is providing support in the rotating machinery area. And in our company right now, we have eight Cat Crackers scattered around the country from Delaware City to Louisiana to Houston, and have a little bit of everything in that package. HAZLE: The next panelist is Spence Cousar. Hes a late fill-in for Jeff Warmann at Williams Energy. They had some problem at the refinery, and Jeff couldnt make it, so Spence is filling in at the last moment. Spence, what do you have at Williams? COUSAR: Im a process engineer at the Williams refinery in Memphis, TN. We have a 75,000 bbd FCC that processes 100% atmospheric tower resid. We completed an FCC revamp in November 1999. We replaced both our reactor and regenerator and installed UOPs VSS catalyst separation technology in both vessels. HAZLE: Thanks. The next panelist is C. J. Farley of Kellogg Brown & Root. FARLEY: I joined KBR in 1997; prior to that, I worked for a major refining company for just over 7 years. My job is to perform FCC technical service work for KBR, which means I travel around the world to visit different locations where we have projects as well as heading to places where we have extended service agreements. The units I typically interface with are Kellogg/KBR 2

designs that are anywhere from five years to thirty years old. I also work with a good number of UOP geometries, such as side-by-side, stacked and high-efficiency designs. HAZLE: The next panelist is Jim Marlowe of Sunocos Toledo refinery. MARLOWE: Ive been with the Sun Toledo Refinery for about ten or fifteen years, and we have a 150,000 bpd fuel facility refinery, and our Cat Cracker is around a 60,000 bpd. Before that I had service with Amoco and with ARCO. HAZLE: Next is Larry Carper, who works in BP Amocos Refining Technology Group in Naperville, Illinois. CARPER: BP Amoco currently has 22 Fluid Units utilizing various designs and technologies throughout the world. Some of the units are gas oil units and some are resid units. My exchange today will focus on experience with the heritage Amoco units as my exposure to the heritage BP units is limited. I have over 23 years experience within the company, and shortly will become a free agent. HAZLE: Alright, last is Frank DeMartino. DEMARTINO: I don't have a Cat Cracker, but I've been working with FCCUs for 25 years. I'm the president of Shared Systems Technology. I've been involved in at least 50 Cat Cracker installations and I've probably seen the full spectrum of FCCU technology. I don't work just for one company, I work for many companies. So that's why I am glad to come here and try to share some information with you. HAZLE: Thank you panelists. Lets go to the first question. Following each question, after the panelists responses, I will ask for questions from the audience. For the first question and the first response, C. J., could you lead on this, please?

I.

REFRACTORY, MATERIALS, INTERNALS, EXPANSION JOINTS, AND SLIDE VALVES


Question 1. Has anyone experienced a packed expansion joint failure due to polythionic corrosion and how do you prevent it from occurring? a) What causes this type of corrosion? b) How are stainless steel joints affected? c) Are exotic metallurgies a solution? d) Any new developments?

FARLEY: Polythionic acid (PTA) stress corrosion is caused by acid formation on "sensitized" stainless steel when air and water contact a sulfur contaminated hydrocarbon. The "sensitization" of stainless steel occurs when the carbon content is "unstabilized" and allows microstructural intergranular paths to form by carbide precipitation during heating (such as welding) when temperatures exceed about 800 F. Stainless steel expansion joints have surfaces that exceed the limits of the onset of stress corrosion. There are natural cavities where water can be trapped in these surfaces, and so materials like 304, 316 or chemically stabilized 321 are not immune in the expansion joint design. For high temperature designs, we usually require an H grade to maintain high temperature strength, but this still allows carbide precipitation or sensitization to take place. In terms of exotic metallurgies to avoid polythionic attack, or other forms of stress corrosion, you have to look at the costs and benefits when reviewing all of the alternatives. We would generally say Inconel 625 is a respectable choice. It has good resistance to sensitization and PTA attack, as well as low temperature chloride attack. We have looked at things like 800H and 800HT. Generally, we tend to stay away from these things, because they are not immune to sensitization. DROSJACK: We've had these problems in our facilities more than once. And really, there are two general areas to look at to keep this from occurring. It's choosing the appropriate materials of heat treatment that can handle the manufacturing processes unsensitized and also keeping the process stress heat moisture away from these bellows and keep the polythionic attack (PTA) from occurring. CARPER: We have struggled with bellows metallurgy for years. The current thinking within our metallurgy community is Inconel 625-LCF. Previously we specified Incoloy 825 and Inconel 625 as an alternate. Our successes with either material is mixed. We recently experienced a failure with Inconel 625 bellows. The internal shroud failed exposing the bellows to the high temperature flue gas. Bellows temperature design is critical. Too cool and you risk dewpoint corrosion or polythionic acid stress corrosion cracking. Too hot can embrittle the bellows material. Internal packing/insulation minimizes catalyst entering the convolutions maintaining the functionality of the bellows or expansion joint. But now you risk cooling the bellows below dewpoint. The solution is to insulate externally, but too much external insulation can overheat the bellows. We suggest monitoring the bellows temperature during and after startup, then adjusting as necessary. Recently we learned that a refinery experienced a bellows failure due to overheating which was caused by excessive external insulation. Anyone care to discuss? DEMARTINO: We've had the opportunity to work with a cross-link inorganic compound that's good to 500F. If you're above the dewpoint where the acid maybe wouldn't be so much of an issue, if you apply this post-cure coating above the dewpoint where the material may be at 500, it's not an issue. But if you're below the dewpoint, the dewpoints change, there's a chance that the coating will resist the acid attack for a long time. I can give you an 800 number, for Advanced Polymer Sciences. The number is 1-800-334-7193. We've put this material in some pretty

adverse conditions, including some high sulfur, high temperature applications and had some real good success. So that may be one thing you want to consider to stop some of your acid attack. Question 2. Has anyone experienced coke formation on the outside diameter of reactor cyclone gas outlet tubes? a) How can coke formation be eliminated? b) Has anyone used anchors to hold the coke in place? Why not? c) How important is removal of the coke?

FARLEY: Question Two is about coke formation on the outside diameter of reactor cyclone gas outlet tubes, and thats what you can see here in this photograph (Figure 1). To improve your perspective, the cyclone inlet horn is located over here (right side of photo), and the gas flow is moving towards the left. What we see is coke formation that has occurred over two to three years of operation. This is a pretty well-known problem, and it happens quite often on the back side of the gas outlet tube, inside the cyclone.

FIGURE 1

Coke forms for several reasons, but primarily, this area is pretty inactive in the cyclone body, so it is not scoured by solids. You can have literally heavy components that form liquid droplets that coalesce in this area, which then thermally crack; this makes a very hard coke, and it gets pretty thick over the run length. You can have two or three inches of material build up. We say that there are basically two root causes for this problem. Generally when we see this, we tend to start looking at the riser operation and start asking whether or not we are getting good atomization in the riser. What kind of temperatures do we have in the riser? Do we have enough catalyst/oil mixing? Is there enough steam in the riser to easily vaporize the hydrocarbon? This has been of particular importance in resid units, where feed can be very difficult to vaporize. We have also seen that one way to help mitigate this is to use a little bit of sweep steam in the reactor vessel disengager. This has been effective for inhibiting this kind of coke formation. But generally, we point to the riser, when we start seeing this type of coke formation.

CARPER: Until recently, we have seen coke form on the OD (outside diameter) of gas outlet tubes in resid operations. The coke was both hard and soft. Most recently we found coke in one of our gas oil units. We are continuing efforts for understanding and prevention. Removal? - Adamantly recommend removal. Coke on the OD of a gas outlet tube is unstable and can plug diplegs. We recently experienced a situation where thermal cycling the reactor was sufficient to dislodge the coke from the outlet tube, plugging a dipleg which resulted in an unplanned outage. So, once again, we are very adamant about coke removal. Regarding the question of anchoring coke, I am not gutsy enough to try and sell this concept! I would like to offer one point of observation, we have found coke to form on both carbon steel, low chrome steel cyclones and refractory. However, we have not experienced coke forming on austenitic stainless steel cyclones in a reactor vessels. It is an interesting observation. DEMARTINO: We happen to work for one customer that has a resid unit that put many, many anchors in place, just to hold the immense amount of coke so they could go inside and get some inspections and then chip away the coke so there was no accidents. So they are using some refractory anchors, at least one of my customers is. And then the discussion was made, you know, if it was a stainless steel vessel and the coke wouldnt attach itself to the vessel, there are ways of arc spray metallizing 304 or 300 grade stainless to carbon steel. The bond strengths are up around 10,000 psi, and theres a chance that the coke would not attach itself to the stainless steel. Its a relatively inexpensive method of application, but its something that somebody may want to try if theyre having a lot of coke buildup. FARLEY: One part of the question, part C, was how important is removal of this coke? And the easy answer is that its absolutely critical to remove this coke. If you go into the unit and you see this present, you really have to take it out, because there are two main issues with that. The first one is, dryout time. You may have to do an air dryout when you restart and as you get up to temperature with air, this coke can be a fuel source. So, how do you keep away from having hot spots? There is not an easy way. Thats the first issue. The second issue is that this material will spall off and end up in a dipleg. And its very, very common around the world to have units that come down for turnaround, see this coke present in the cyclone system, and decide not to spend the time to get it out. And when this happens, there is a very real chance that all they are doing is buying about two or three weeks of time, because they are going to go back in the vessel to get the material out of the dipleg. Its very important for the coke to be removed if you see it on the gas outlet tube. QUINCY SUMMERS (Countrymark Co-op): Quincy Summers with Countrymark, Mt. Vernon, Indiana. What are some of the best methods to remove the coke? DEMARTINO: Were going to show a sketch here (Figure 2) of some demolition hammers, which is the answer to your specific question. Later in the session, my response to question #20 will also cover explosive demolition, hydrodemolition, and robotic demolition. Of everything weve seen 6

in all of these refineries I talk to across the United States, basically, a rivet buster is the most effective. And we brought some pictures to show you on the screen of this. Its not a great thing. Everybody ends up covered in coke dust at the end of the shift and you get bigger muscles. That still seems to be the best way for the demolition.

FIGURE 2

There are some robotic systems out there, but theyre one entity demolition pieces whereas you can have six, eight, ten rivet busters working in the same unit, it gets you off the critical path pretty quickly. There are some sketches coming up of that. LEWIS FREDERICKSON (Chevron Products Company): Im Lew Frederickson from Chevron. I stood up in front of the NPRA Q&A panel about ten years ago and said Chevron doesnt have a coking problem inside of cyclones. I have evidence now that if you stick around FCC units long enough, the darn things will make you a liar about everything you say. PHOTO 1X

This is a sample (Photo 1x) of the kind of coke we found on the backside of the cyclone outlet tubes in one of our FCC reactors. Its beautiful. Its got about a 30-inch arc on the backside and its got imprints of hex mesh on that backside. Its got very nice horizontal erosion marks on 7

the other side. It was really easy to figure out where it came from. The scary part was that experienced inspectors were in those cyclones, and they didnt see it. As you all know, it was black in there, everything was shiny, and sometimes the deposits are a lot smoother than this one is. Unless youre really looking for it, you might not find coke deposits like this. We missed it during the shutdown, and when we tried to startup, a lot of this coke spalled off. It went through the diplegs okay, but it plugged the spent catalyst slide valve. We also had a large pile of coke in the bottom of the spent catalyst stand pipe. We took several more bucketfuls of coke out of the two cyclones in this FCC unit. I fully support the recommendation the panel made - if you find coke in the cyclones, you need to take it out. It will cause a problem somewhere sooner or later. And youve really got to be alert in looking for it, or you might have the same problem we did. In another FCC shutdown following the coke incident mentioned above, we tried inspecting the reactor cyclones with a video camera due to really tough accessibility. We did not identify coke with the video camera, but when we did get someone into the cyclones to look specifically for coke, we found deposits in the same location. EDWIN D. TENNEY (Marsulex Inc.): Weve also seen, or had reported in a number of our cyclones that people have had coking in the reactors for all the reasons that were mentioned. Back in the mid-80s, we did some experimental work with filling up the back area with some special refractory and a special design. We put it into two units, and the reports that we got were good. If anybodys interested, well certainly talk to you. The other thing Larry Carper mentioned about the difference between stainless steel and the low chrome and the carbon steels, weve also seen that with regards to coke buildup on things like counter-weighted valves. We attribute it to the fact that the low chrome and the carbon steels will have an oxide surface on them, and a rough surface, or much rougher than the stainless steel which, of course, is pickled and does not particularly corrode. JOSEPH W. WILSON (Barnes and Click, Inc.): Not so much a question as a comment. Im Bill Wilson, an FCC consultant with Barnes and Click. One of the questions they had here was about using anchors to hold the coke in place. Another option that works sometimes, and Lou Frederickson kind of demonstrated, is that it tends to stay on refractory lined surfaces better than it does on a steel surface. This is primarily important in the sense that as it forms during operation, its less likely to break off from a small upset, if you have refractory lining on the outside of that outlet tube. Lous stayed on until they started back up again, apparently, and then it came off. But we actually have had one case where just lining that tube prevented unexpected shutdowns from plugged diplegs after spalling off the outlet tube. So just another option to at least alleviate some of the downside of this coke buildup. I agree it needs to come off, once you find it. Question 3. What is your experience with erosion in regenerator secondary cyclone dust bowls? Explain the effect of cyclone size and catalyst loading on expected cyclone life. What is the experience with different refractory systems for regenerator cyclones?

MARLOWE: The picture (Figure 3) shows what happened to our unit on our last inspection, which was in March 2000. This is a picture of our secondary hopper on our secondary cyclone. This Sun Refinery has regen cyclones that are too small for the throughput that we desire. Weve elected 8

to live with that limit as long as possible. We had to do some research with cyclone experts. We talked to Ed Tenney, we talked to Tony Schultz, and Kellogg specialists. About six months before our last outage in March, we decided that we were running velocities that were too high in our cyclones. We had known since 93 that our cyclones are too small.

FIGURE 3

So we presented much of what Im telling you today to our upper management. And we told them that in 85, we had new cyclones. They were put in for the high temperature regeneration. In 89, we increased our design conditions to 55,000 bbd. We added wear plates to the secondary hoppers to try to avoid some of this wear through on the secondary cyclones. In 95, we put new secondary hoppers in on that outage, and we added more wear plates. We also put some wear plates on the diplegs where we found some more wear out areas. In preparing for the 2000 turnaround, we were anticipating to have as many as 104 wear areas that we would be prepared to patch. The history in 89 with our cyclone wear was that we had excessive wear to our secondary hoppers and diplegs. We were about a month away from hole through. So we added wear plates, hoping that we would be able to run a little longer without having a hole through. In '95, we did run longer. We had a five year and three month run. We had excessive wear also in the secondary hoppers, even with our improvements. We did add some more wear plates and we improved the secondary hoppers by adding some length to them and putting in 1" refractory in lieu of the ". But still, we were one month away from a hole through in both these situations. This is the kind of wear we've seen. This is a picture (Figure 4) looking down into the bottom of the secondary hopper. And what you're seeing there is circular wear at the very top of the dipleg and that is what's worn the most. You can see that we lost the refractory, we lost the hex, and we were wearing into the metal. That was on the same hopper that you saw a picture of just a minute ago. Seven out of our eight hoppers had those kinds of holes in them when we opened them up in the year 2000 after a five year run.

FIGURE 4

FIGURE 5

But weve slowed our velocities down from the 86 or 87 feet per second at the inlet of the secondary hoppers. We had given our management a choice of shutting down earlier or limiting our velocities. So we found a way to limit our velocities and we did make it to the turnaround. But as you can see, we couldnt have run much longer. Wed have only made it maybe one or two more months. Thats another picture (Figure 5) of the holes where you can see the white dusting there coming down. Each one of those is an actual hole through the hopper area and the dipleg. From this photograph (Figure 5) Ive got some more comments, I guess, in relation to the velocities. We had run different run lengths at different velocities, so we had a pretty good history on this unit. We could tell that in a four-year run, before we had done some of the improvements, we had an average velocity of about 81 feet per second at the inlet of this second stage hopper. Then for the five year and three month run we had in our 95 outage, we had an

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average of about 82 feet per second. So we knew that was the range that we could live with in our situation. So we had good history, we had good inspection, and we didnt change to anything that was a larger size or different, so we knew what to expect. We knew with a maximum velocity of 85 and an average of 83 we would be able to hold out. And thats basically what were doing now. For our next run, were going to give them these same limits. We know were not going to be able to wear the cyclones out at the secondary hoppers if we control these velocities. FARLEY: Regarding the cyclones, we think its pretty common to see wear on the secondary cyclones dust bowls. And just as the picture shows, it's not uncommon to see holes this size in the dust bowls. Inlet and outlet velocities in the secondary cyclones are higher than the primary cyclones. That gives you a really high swirling velocity found in the dust bowl area, which leads to a much more erosive condition. In the primary cyclone you have high catalyst loading and that loading provides a kind of cushion for the particles to ride along each other. The high loading exerts some drag on that gas, so you have a reduced swirling velocity. The upper cyclone in the secondary cyclones has low solids loading so it has higher swirling velocities. Primary cyclones high solids loading and fairly low pressure drop means gas usually flows down the dipleg. But in the secondary cyclones, generally, vapor comes up the dipleg, which makes for very poor conditions in that dust bowl. So it's very easy to have erosion. KBR strongly believes you want to limit the secondary cyclone inlet velocity to about 75 feet per second; we think there is more flexibility in outlet velocity, but we believe you should stay below 175 fps. We think that controlled inlet velocity is critical for having long run length. It's also a very common industry practice to go well over 75 feet a second on the inlet velocity. The reason is that companies want to take advantage of capacity in the unit. They have an existing cyclone there and they can make money today by running over 75 feet a second. It's fairly common to do that. Increasing the cyclone size gives you a lower velocity, which gives you lower swirling velocities, and so you have less erosion potential. It is important to note that most people believe erosion is a factor of velocity to at least the third power (cubed). Some people believe it is even higher than this. There is a substantial change in erosion potential with a small increase in velocity. We also believe that high L/D (length to diameter) ratios will improve cyclone efficiencies. However, in terms of minimizing secondary cyclone erosion, high L/D in the first stage is more useful. And then, in terms of erosion, we think it is a marginal improvement. This is not to say we do not believe in high L/D. This is a critical parameter for maximum efficiency. We do not, however, think this is a large factor in erosion in the secondary cyclone. BAZIL BURGESS (Premcor, retired): My name is Bazil Burgess, and Ive just taken a package from the Premcor refinery in Lima, which used to be the BP Refinery there before it was sold. In the regenerator cyclone, they have a continual problem, which I believe they're planning on solving by replacing the cyclones next time. But in '93, we had a cyclone holed just below the dipleg in the secondary cyclones. We went in, installed boxes, refilled them with refractory. And on the next major shutdown in '94, we went in, increased the length of the cyclone dust pots, and brought it back up, and took the boxes off, of course.

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We had an opportunity to go back in about two and a half or three years later, because of a failure elsewhere in the unit, and discovered that the entire bottom half of the cone of the cyclone on the secondary cyclones had eroded to bare metal. And right at the junction of the dust pot and the dipleg, wed eroded to bare metal there also. At that time, we didnt have any idea what had caused it, but we went ahead and made appropriate repairs, talked to our vendor, and he had informed us that our cyclones were borderline on length the first time around when they were built. And we were probably increasing our velocity. We got a recommendation from them on velocities for that particular cyclone, and talked to our process engineer, and he made us up a set of charts based on airflow of the air going into the regenerator, temperature coming out of the regenerator and also pressure. And we operated by that. We still had a little problem when we went back in in 99, but it wasnt as bad. We had the same circumstances. I believe their plans at this point are to replace those cyclones, because theyre also planning on going up in capacity. DONALD F. SHAW (Carmagen Engineering, Inc.): My name is Don Shaw. Im currently with Carmagen Engineering, formerly with Exxon, with about 37 years experience in the Cat Cracking business. I just wanted to reinforce and maybe offer a few new comments to what were made. I listed what I think might be root causes for this problem, and the assumption is you might have a clean sheet of paper and youre designing new cyclones. But on the other hand, if youre trying to fix something during a turnaround, you might try to accommodate some of these issues. I think people have already mentioned inlet velocities as a key item. The numbers that I like to see are probably between 75 and 85 feet per second in inlet. Ive heard people talk about slightly lower limits. But I think that also depends on the overall system that you have. The other one, which I think cyclone vendors will talk about, is the L over D ratio of the cyclone bodies. At least in some circles, that is considered to be a critical aspect. If the cyclone bodies are longer, then theres more time for the vortex kinetic energy to be dissipated before it gets into the dust bowls. Realizing again, you cant always lengthen your cyclones, because an existing unit that might shorten the dipleg, and you have to be able to work that out. The other item that was alluded to is the gas outlet velocities. I think its pretty well known if you talk to the cyclone vendors, that if you have a higher outlet velocity, you generate a deeper vortex, and its driven down into the dust bowl. And people with cyclones that have put in smaller outlet tubes have seen this erosion occur. The last item, which I dont think has been mentioned, but I think weve seen in some cases, is a primary cyclone thats not the best cyclone in the world and may not be as efficient as it should be, I sort of call it a dysfunctional primary cyclone. You might be putting higher loadings and more catalyst and larger particle sizes into the secondary cyclone. And sometimes the fix is to try to improve the primary cyclone, if indeed you can. One other comment. Obviously, everybody has done the wear plate scheme. One thing that I guess I was surprised to see several years ago we've seen where people have boxed in, put a wear plate on, and actually there was enough kinetic energy in the gap between wear plate and the old metallic body pieces, that the erosion occurred in that little gap, and people hole through in that area. So, sometimes the wear plates, unless they're filled with refractory and really tight to the surface, can be problems in that area.

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EDWIN D. TENNEY (Marsulex Inc.): We did some work on this some years ago, and we found that the shape of the hopper makes a significant difference. And we have been putting some of those in here for the last several years, so were still waiting to get the final results. But we have seen the same designs in some online petrochemical cyclones and there we have seen a night and day change from the erosion to no erosion. JOSEPH L. ROSS (IFP North America): I thank you for the comment on the 82 or 83 foot a second and four and five year run length you observed. But could you share with us the L over D and the outlet velocities associated with that? MARLOWE: Yes. I guess we didnt really change the L over D. It doesnt make a whole lot of difference, from what I understand, on the secondary cyclone, but it makes much more difference on the primary cyclone. Maybe Ed can address it, Im not sure. We didnt really concern ourselves too much with that. We were worried about the wear point in the secondary hopper. The location of our wear was right at the bottom of the vortex from the cone. And we had a couple of options there. We could cut back the cone a little bit, and we could lengthen the secondary hopper. We elected to do both. We trimmed the cone back a little bit so it was a little wider, after the cone comes into the secondary hopper. We had the secondary hopper made longer so that where our vortex ended, we would be above our lower transition cone into the dipleg. So that seemed to make a little difference. But, as you can see, it didnt stop the wear. It still was the highest velocity right there at the bottom of the cone. Question 4. Who is using on-line refractory wear indicators?

CARPER: Several of our unit asset managers have asked our technology groups to investigate the development of cyclone wear indicators. Funding did not follow the requests, resulting in no development. I would like to poll the audience to determine who is using and who is interested. Is anybody currently using cyclone wear indicators and what type? Is there any interest in it? Please raise your hands. (Response: One). DEMARTINO: Bill Dawes of United Refining is in the audience this afternoon. He and I came up with an idea and we had some patent searches done on it, which is basically is to embed a material at a specific thickness in the refractory lining. We assumed that this would be more for the thin wall abrasion linings. If youre on a stand pipe or a regenerator wall, you can do a thermal imaging, but this probably wouldnt help you because elevated temperatures are certainly going to tell you that you have refractory loss. But this system is for a typical hot wall installation with a thin abrasion-resistant lining, like aa-22. What we do is embed a detectable material that is encapsulated in the material of choice for the thin wall of various linings - could be plastic, could be Atchem, could be A22. The material is built inside the capsule to the point that it would embed itself midpoint in a 1" lining or a 3/4" lining. As the unit comes online, and this refractory thats in the face of this 13

abrades away, this detectable material would release itself in the operational environment of the Cat Cracker, or a petroleum coke gasifier. Weve already had some discussion with the catalyst companies that do the testing of the catalyst for the refineries at least every week. And this material is detectable. So, in essence, what were saying is if you run your cyclones for 20 months and you have a release, and you pick up a certain ppm, you know that you have a problem somewhere where you had determined to install these devices. And if you know that you ran 20 months and you have a release, its time to start thinking that in 20 months, youre going to start to hole through some of these cyclones, diplegs or internal stand pipes or other things like that. This is patent pending at this point. I dont have the financial resources to market something like this. And I really dont want to be bothered. So weve been talking to Vesuvius and RHI and Resco and a couple of the others to see if they could purchase it and market it. Its much more than a company my size can handle, but we think that its going to help a lot of companies down the line. KEITH E. BLAIR (Valero Refining Company): Keith Blair, Valero Refining, Paulsboro, New Jersey. Frank, you were talking about actually taking a sample stream of the internal material, whatever the hydrocarbon is off of there. Are you saying something tubing-wise is actually sampling something off of there, or is this a thermocouple-type installation? DEMARTINO: There is no mechanical attachment in electronics or pressure taps or anything like that. This simply releases a specific material, which travels with the catalyst and wont affect the unit youre running. KEITH E. BLAIR (Valero Refining Company): Okay, Ive got you. So you havent come across anything where somebody is embedding something like thermocouples halfway through a refractory lining? DEMARTINO: We thought about thermocouples, but then you have a multitude of lines running out the cyclone and through the shell. And its just a mess. We couldnt see how you could encapsulate the lines with A22 and then Bob Jenkins is inspecting more of our stuff, so who would want to pay for that? But on a weekly basis or twice a week, typically the catalyst companies will check the catalyst. And for a nominal fee, they can look for this type of material. Once you say Hey, we have a release, you have a potential problem down the line. And then so you don't throw 100 tons of catalyst out after your first run, you have a benchmark of say 1 ppm of the material. So the next time you have a release in there of say 2 ppm, you have another potential problem down the line. BAZIL BURGESS (Premcor, retired): When we installed close coupled cyclones in '94, we put a number of thermocouples in the cyclones going to the outside. We also talked to vendors at that time and they suggested there is also a possibility of using this type of cyclone or a thermocouple insulation for a refractory cyclone wear indicator. I don't think anybody has done anything with it, but it was a possibility at that time, so it's probably still suitable, because I do know the thermocouples 14

theyve got inside the reactor now are still functional, and they are the type of thermocouples that you would need to be able to install in the cyclones that were talking about. DEMARTINO: Bazil, are these vibration casted cyclones? BAZIL BURGESS (Premcor, retired): These are all in a high density, abrasion resistant refractory such as the plastics, the rammables. Most of the cyclones were talking about do have a 1" or 3/4" of high density, abrasion resistant refractory, both in the reactor and the regenerator. Question 5. What do you do about severe erosion of air grid nozzles? What are the advantages and disadvantages of upward and downward pointed nozzles?

MARLOWE: At the Sun Toledo refinery, we have around 1000 air grid nozzles about an inch and a half in diameter. In the 95 turnaround, we tried about four different types of repairs after much discussion with different people. Kellogg Engineering agreed that these would be about the best four different methods we could try.

FIGURE 6

So we tried ceramic nozzles on the air grid on a small scale basis. We had some direct replacement and we had some oversized sleeves that we had tried in the past. We took a look at those and we saw that neither one of those actually solved our problem. We were getting a lot of erosion and backflow into the nozzles. As you can see from this picture (Figure 6), we have a couple different types of nozzles. But the wear is pretty typical for anything that projects outside the refractory. We could see that you get outside wear and you get wear from the catalyst recirculating inside the nozzle. What was interesting to us is, in 95, once we cut back the nozzle to the refractory lines the eroding lessened or stopped. At least it seemed that way. So we did cut a number of them 15

back flush to the refractory line and we left those that had cut themselves back alone. We had an order in for a couple hundred of the ceramic nozzle inserts, and installed around 40. Thats what you see with the white circles here. Actually, the picture (Figure 6) is from the year 2000 this last spring. They start out pretty square and flat at the surface, and then wear pretty uniformly in more of a dome shape. The other thing we did was replace a number of in-kind nozzles and we did try some oversized sleeves that fit over the worn nozzle tips. But by far, the best thing we could see after we opened up on the year 2000 spring turnaround, was that just cutting back the nozzles to the refractory line worked well. Unless you have a nozzle that actually has recirculation and goes back inside the nozzle past the refractory line, you really dont have to worry about adverse effects. Kellogg will tell you, that you want to make sure your nozzle length still has critical dimensions or you will still have wear problems. You have to keep a minimum dimension from the orifice of your nozzle out to the end, whether its at the refractory line or whether its at the end of the nozzles you put in. FARLEY: Jim, youre right. KBR will tell you about that. In terms of erosion on the air grid, we see a couple of main things. And these were alluded to in Jims section. First, we definitely recommend the use of dual diameter nozzles. That is a nozzle that has an orifice at the beginning of the nozzle, and then a specific length of piping before the air discharges into the bed. The orifice takes pressure drop to make sure there is even air distribution. That helps eliminate catalyst backflow in one section of the grid and which then gets discharged through another section of the grid. When catalyst backs into a grid on a routine basis, its pretty bad. Grids just do not last. You would generally target air grid pressure drop for around 1.5 psi, or ~ 30% of the static head of the bed at turnaround conditions. And, you have to be careful about catalyst attrition, which can be caused by high velocity jets being discharged from the nozzles. This was actually discussed in 1996 at this meeting. I would like to mention the nozzle length is very important. You want to avoid having a nozzle where the orifice is located too close to the nozzle discharge; this gives you a high velocity jet discharging into the catalyst bed because the flow is not fully developed in the nozzle. That can cause catalyst attrition. KBR also fully refractory lines the external portion of the air grid to improve mechanical reliability. This reduces the temperature the grid operates at as well as cuts down on the temperature differences between the top and bottom surfaces of the grid. There is a portion of the question about upward and downward pointing nozzles. I think the industry experience has been that both types of nozzles will work. KBR prefers the downward pointing nozzles. We believe its harder to plug these types of nozzles during upsets. We also believe this has better resistance to backmix erosion. We think there is some mechanical reliability to be gained by having downward point nozzles. BAZIL BURGESS (Premcor, retired): When I was working for Charter back in the 80s, we installed a new UOP dome air grid and had the occasion to try several different nozzles in that air grid. We came up with two designs that worked for us. First of all, we coated the dome itself with 1" of high density, abrasion resistant refractory. At each hole for the nozzle, we installed ceramic nozzles with a tapered configuration that would match the flow distribution as it came out and the inside was

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rounded so we had an exact diameter for the orifice. That worked fairly well, both the ceramic was hard enough for resistance similar to the refractory, and when we came back down and looked at it, we had actually maybe just a few signs of some erosion in the nozzles, but very little if any at all. They probably would have gone for several more runs without any trouble. We did have a flow problem, because the designs we were given were based on a square edged orifice, and we put in a rounded edge orifice. So we changed to a design similar to that which Kellogg mentioned where were looking at a section of pipe with an orifice at the bottom. I believe thats about a 4 to 1 ratio on the pipe and the length. But you should consult someone else on that, since its been a while since Ive done this work. But what we did is we used a thin wall piece of pipe, either tubing or something like Schedule 5 or Schedule 10 stainless, and we put the top of the pipe right at the surface of our refractory. This worked exceptionally well. What would happen is youd get a polishing of the refractory on - we were looking at 1" thin wall pipe. We had about a 6" diameter polishing of the top of the refractory, and the metal was barely worn after several years. So I would anticipate again, that design also would work for several years. This was reported to this meeting probably in the mid-80s. RICHARD BINKS (Dynamic-Ceramics Ltd.): Good afternoon. Historically, there has been a problem in joining ceramics to metals due to the difference in thermal expansion. Dynamic-Ceramics has got around that by patenting a design. What experience does the panel have in joining ceramics to metals and getting around the problem of the differential in thermal expansion? MARLOWE: You mean as far as attaching the two? RICHARD BINKS (Dynamic-Ceramics Ltd.): Yes. MARLOWE: This was a Corhart design. It was a ceramic insert inside and it had two pieces of steel outside the ceramic. There was one piece of steel that was shaped for the header similar to a sockolet. And then theres an outer pipe sleeve on top of that. And those two pieces were welded together and that locked in the ceramic insert. Of course, theres a little gap there so you have this difference for thermal growth. RICHARD BINKS (Dynamic-Ceramics Ltd.): Did the gap cause you any problems for vibration? MARLOWE: On vibration? No. We didn't see any cracking or anything like that if that's what youre referring to. JOHN PRICE (Corhart Refractories): John Price with Corhart Refractories. We're the ones that manufactured the Corguard, and the one that has come up with that design. We've used it in other areas other than the air grid nozzle, but what we do, because the thermal expansion differential is about half of that of the stainless steel, we allow enough play on both sides of the collar to take care of that expansion 17

and have the surface sealed with the gaskets on both sides so that you can allow for that differential to take place within the nozzle or within the joint and still then, just youll be welding the steel to steel whether youre on a pipe grid or a dome or whatever. And we havent had any leakage that Im aware of since weve gone to that two-piece design. Initially, there was a onepiece collar design that relied too much on the installer to make sure that the seal was good, and we had a few installations where there were a couple that leaked. But when we went to the twopiece design and we controlled the sealing of the ceramic to the steel in our shop, then those problems went away. Question 6. Compare wet gunning of refractory materials in a coke impregnation service v. regular gunning. Are the shell temperature (k) values or test results affected? Is coke impregnation affected?

DEMARTINO: We have the opportunity to do either wet or dry, based on the application of any specific turnaround. The big thing you have to remember is if you have enough volume, and Im sure the other competitors will agree with this, by the time you set up all your equipment and slick the hose, get your mixes just right, waste the first ton up in the unit to get it nice and gelled and the proper water/cement ratios, you can dry gun by that time. If youre doing a few hundred square feet or a thousand square feet in your regenerator or even your reactor, there are some wonderful pluses to doing the wet gunning of refractories. Theres no dusting. The application is extremely precise versus the dry gunning. There are no laminations. Plus you can have multiple crafts doing simultaneous workscopes like stud welding, scaffolding modifications, stick welding all at the same time. So, it really has a chance to reduce some of the critical path that you may have on your turnaround. The waste factor is down around 5%, maybe a little bit higher on the overhead applications. And the set times of the refractories that are being applied can be adjusted. There are retardants that can be put into it so it gives you a little bit more working time. The material will gel, but it wont have an exothermic reaction right away. Those are the obvious advantages to wet gunning. Applications can exceed ten tons an hour, if you have continuous feed mixers and a ten ton per hour rockvalve swing tube refractory pump. Question 7. Has anyone used a no cure refractory and has the experience been satisfactory?

DEMARTINO: The No cure refractory that we dealt with made by the John Zink Company is called Thermbond. It uses an acid as the liquid to reduce the heat cure schedules sometimes down to zero. We have gunited the material in large quantities and have hand applied it to many areas of Cat Crackers. There are pros and cons to these types of materials. If you're hand packing, ramming or casting them they are a pleasure to work with. Gunite applications require a large amount of personal protective equipment. This is due to the dust and the acid used for wetting the material at the nozzle. Some applications may not be justified for the use of such materials due to the fact

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that the cost and time of application may outweigh the cost and time associated with the heat cure. CARPER: I am not aware of any low or no cement castable used in our units. The question you should ask yourself is why do you need to use them? If the argument is you want to save time on the startup due to refractory dryout, seriously challenge the argument. These units are tremendous in size and you cannot heat them fast enough. Our approach to refractory dryout is quite simple. Use the total installed cost approach with repairs which includes refractory dryout. Before startup, we have a multi-disciplinary team review the refractory repairs, including locations, refractory types and quantity of material installed and the startup procedure. By the time you start the air blower, perform an air test, purge the reactor, light the air heater pilot, load catalyst, heat the catalyst, light the torch oil - this is a slow process. The vessels and catalyst are large heat sinks and the start up process is sufficiently slow enough to avoid adding time for refractory dryout. DEMARTINO: I would agree with you in the reactor and the regenerator, but weve had the opportunity to apply these materials in the air heaters of the Cat Cracker. They werent heat cured and were ramped up to operating temperature quickly with no spalling at all. Question 8. What is the experience with form and pump casting technique v. wet gunning refractory?

MARLOWE: In talking about refractories, at our refinery, weve got a lot of different refractories. The units are pretty old, have been there since the 70s. And we try to replace part of the walls. In the regenerator, we try to get about a third of it done at every major turnaround, i.e. every four or five years. We try to take a certain square footage of the regenerator and try to get it replaced. We know, in talking with our refractory specialist and others in the business, that youre not going to get that refractory to hold up too much longer than 15 or 20 years without having some problems with it spalling, cracking, deteriorating to the point where youll have hot spots. Well, we had some material here that wed already replaced and it was less than 15 years old, and we were getting hot spots. So, we had some refractory that was not cured right, not mixed right, or it wasnt exactly the right material. Between 1995 and the year 2000 for our turnaround, we actually had to cool our regenerator walls with some steam spray nozzles. So we were concerned, and we were monitoring, getting thermal pictures to make sure that we werent getting larger or different spots. But it turned out to be only in the upper third of the shell on the regenerator. And we were planning on replacing this with conventional refractory. In the meantime, we heard about some people that were trying some of this pump casting material. Some of our corporate people got together, went and saw, and got some information from people who had seen this material first-hand after it had been in service for a while. We went back in with about two-thirds of our regenerator with this pump casting material, so this is a picture (Figure 7) of what it looks like when they forming up one of the sections. They stack on top of each other and keep moving the forms up. It doesnt take it a real long time, and were very hopeful that this is going to hold up just like it has in the couple of

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locations weve seen. Were hoping to get 15 or 20 years without any spalling or cracking. So this is one of the options we have over a light gunned refractory material.

FIGURE 7

DEMARTINO: The system that Jims talking about is a patented system. Including myself, we cannot install this. But there are some other, maybe slightly better ways to approach the installation. For form and pump casting, you would start by welding a 3/8" carbon steel stud on specific centers. You would attach a naturally a footed anchor around the stud, and then a flared nut to retain the base of the footed anchor. Screwed to that would be a piece of 3/8" stainless steel rod that has a thread for a few inches, and then a little bitty dent or snap configuration, so that it can be removed once the pumping is done. After that it would have another nut, and then there's a fender washer. This would support the Masonite or plywood. On Jim Marlowe's photograph, you could see this plywood and 2 X 4 whaler that's two 2 X 4's with a 3/8" spacer between them. A rod would come through the 3/8" spacers, have another fender washer and a nut, and then what you would do is simply fill in this cavity with other refractory that you want to use. Once that's complete, you simply strip everything out to this point, put a pair of vise grips on above the snap configuration, torque it, and it would snap off, and would certainly fill that little void up with the refractory that you were pumping. With the lightweight and the medium weight refractory, it's a non-issue. When you start to get up into the higher density refractories, there is an issue with cracking, I guess it's like pouring a concrete driveway and you're putting a column every six feet. You're going to get a myriad of cracks from this stud to the next stud to the next stud, because just in the pouring application, you're going to set up some tremendous stresses with the higher density refractories. But for the medium and the lightweight refractories, it works well. There are some other systems out there to circumvent the patent system whereby they'll build a set of wooden welders or rent steel forming systems and have supports back to the cyclone system. But please bear in mind, by the time you set all this up, and you may have multiple crafts involved, because the carpenters want to do it and the iron workers want to do it, and everybody gets involved in some of this stuff. By the time you set up this form system, you

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could shotcrete it. Again, you need quite a bit of volume just to warrant the application. Right, Jim? You need more than 100 square feet. MARLOWE: Yes, ours was a large area. Say 20 feet tall and the circumference of the 35 feet diameter regenerator. DEMARTINO: Right. The other thing I see, if you drop a coffee cup in there or something like that, maybe a pair of glasses, but thats still within spec, if you know what I mean ( laughs ). You do have some issues with making a cavity and filling it with refractory. Question 9. What is your operating experience with a slide valve that has boltless internals?

COUSAR: During our October 1999 revamp, we installed boltless slide valves in place of our existing Regenerated catalyst and new Recirculating catalyst slide valves. Our experience with bolted slide valves is that the bolts coming loose tend to cause the valve to ultimately fail (Figure 8 Bolting Failure). During every turnaround in the past, we would have to repair and/or replace these bolts. We'd end up cutting the bolts out and tacking the nuts back to the orifice plate anyway. The boltless design seems to cure these problems; however, we havent had a full run with them yet. (Figure 9 Boltless Weld-in Design) (Figure 10 Traditional vs. Boltless Design).

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One problem that we had was due to a design anomaly. The Recirculation valve is very close to our combustor due to our structure limitations. The radiant heat affects the recirculation slide valve body in such a way that there is up to a 250F differential across the valve. The valve was designed to have less than 100F across it. Due to the thermal difference and the tight tolerances in the slide valve tongue and guides, the slide valve tongue would hang up at 60% open. We solved this problem by installing a 1" thick thermal blanket on the bottom of the valve. Since then, we have had no problems operating the valve with up to a 150F differential across it. Question 10. What do you use to purge the slide valve stem? Are there any advantages for a purgeless system? CARPER: I am aware of success stories within the heritage BP units using purgeless slide valves. However, I am also aware of two miserable failures. 22

Both failures were on flue gas valves. Damaged items included stems, stuffing boxes and actuator seals due to the catalyst laden gas. We were not able to determine the root cause for the failures. Our solution was to revert to purged valve stems. For purge control we currently recommend restriction orifice plates. We have used restriction orifice unions which leak and restriction orifice valves, ROVs. We found manufacturing variances in ROVs which eventually lead us to restriction orifice plates. Purge medium is dependent service. We recommend using steam or nitrogen for regenerated or catalyst control valves and air or nitrogen for flue gas valves. If you elect to use steam, ensure the steam is properly trapped and dry. The preferred medium is nitrogen. We size our restriction orifices using an exit velocity criteria. We design for a limit at 90 feet per second at the annular area between the stem outside diameter and backseat bushing inside diameter using downstream conditions. MARLOWE: As Larry talked about there are many mediums you can use for purge. We do purge the stems of our slide valves - our spent catalyst slide valves and our regenerator slide valves, and the purge medium that we use right now is steam. Not necessarily as dry as we'd like to have it, but it's what we have available. We do restrict the flow to these purge connections. The options that we have for purge in our refinery are steam, air, and nitrogen. We've tried all these purge mediums in other locations, and some of them are on our butterfly valves, usually dry orificed air. Right now, we've just installed three new Enpro butterfly valves out of about six or seven butterfly valves we have on our Cat Cracker. For each of those Enpro valves, the manufacturer recommends we either leave it purgeless or that we can purge it partially. We've elected to see if we can go purgeless, and so far, so good. We've had one packing that gave us a little trouble and will continue monitoring, and the other one seems to be holding up very well. But the flow, the amount of flow, and keeping the flow consistent is always critical to any of our purge systems. It seems like you can't go four or five years without having some kind of upset or interruption to the purge medium, whether it's in your purge system or in other systems. Once this happens the risk is not getting the purge back or becoming less and less effective. As soon as you get a stop of the flow or you get too much flow or too little flow you are headed for problems with the purge. Too high a flow gives you a lot of circulation and gets catalyst flowing in there and you're going to wear some things down. If you don't have enough flow, you're going to plug things up with catalyst and you might not be able to clear it back out. You need to try to establish the right flow just like Larry was talking about, and keep it there as consistently as you possibly can and hope it doesn't stop to the point where you plug things up. COUSAR: We have experienced slide valve stem erosion from too much purge and coking of the packing area with too little purge (Figure 11Too Much Purge and Figure 12 Too Little Purge). We currently have all purgless systems on slide valves (Figure 13 Purge-less Stuffing Box). We did experience a packing failure, but it was due to an engineering bust related to the spring can hangers on the slide valves. We have since installed the proper springs to remedy the problem. We do recommend that a detection system be placed on the purge port. If a failure of the primary packing occurs, the detector will sense it and more packing material can be added into the packing area thereby sealing off the leak.

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Question 11. How have stud welded refractory anchors held up in service? How long a run did they have?

DEMARTINO: Stud welded refractory anchors have caught on, it appears in the northeastern United States, and have performed extremely well, but it seems to be less accepted out West. We have installed about three million stud welded anchors in seven years with minimal failure. When we talk to the customer about the hex anchor productivity rates, theyre three times faster than stick welded hex steel linings. Theres also reduced labor, because were using bricklayers versus boilermakers. The welding flash hazard is near zero, because the flash is contained in the ceramic ferrule, so just safety glasses are acceptable, you dont need a welding shield. With the single power source, you can stud weld with up to three guns nearly simultaneously. If you pull the trigger on two of them at the same time, they will not actuate. But if theyre seconds apart, they will actuate. So theres some reduced costs in equipment use. Youre going to get a more consistent weld application, and its a very, very easy weld test, which is an AWSD1.1. And all that means is youre going to put a an apparatus over the weld and bend it 30 to one side, 30 to the other side. It's not like taking a 20 lb. sledge hammer and making the anchor look like a tortilla until it falls to the bottom of the unit, and the inspector says he thinks it's no good. The savings are about 40% over the hex steel applications. And there have also been some of the refiners (I won't mention names) who have been through at least two runs on their Cats with the hex anchors and the v-anchors and things like that. It's a wonderful way to save money, especially if you're going up in cyclones hex steel. I think I have photos (Figures 14 and 15) of a cyclone that we were doing. That's a stud welded hex anchor that happens to be made by Causeway. This is a cyclone conical shape. We put premier Atchem in there, and that was for Foster Wheeler cyclones for China. The job turned out very well. A little bit tougher to stud weld a specific pattern in a conical shape rather than in a barrel.

FIGURE 14

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FIGURE 15

MARLOWE: I wasnt aware that a lot of people were afraid or worried about the stud anchors because our experience at Sun has been very, very good with them. We've been using it in '85 '89,95, and the year 2000 turnarounds. We put in stud anchors, and most recently we stud lined the Kbars for the air grid. But we have had good experience with them. I don't know whether that's just because we make sure we put them in right or we make sure we get the surface preparation you need. We did some testing on the stud anchors and came to the conclusion that they were just as apt to bend and break at the anchor as they were to snap at the weld out. This picture here (Figure 16) shows the surface of our regenerator, and as you can see, we have had the stud welding and we've had the stick welds and anchors on the surface. But there are still some areas where we have the stick welds. We do prefer to use the stud welding applications. It's much faster and easier to use with no adverse problems related to the many installations that Sun has.

FIGURE 16

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DEMARTINO: Theres one more application. Working with Bob Jenkins and doing some vibration casting of refractory applications, they recommend that anchors be solution annealed before theyre installed, because the heavy vibration, if theyre not solution annealed, have a tendency to fatigue and snap during the refractory installation. But if you stud weld the carbon steel stud, which you see in the flared nut and put the solution-annealed anchor onto it, theres no heat affected zone from re-welding a solution-annealed anchor to a carbon steel. It probably decimates the solution annealing of it anyhow. It seems to help out some of the other applications that we have. Question 12. We have experienced extensive cracking on a 304H stainless steel line and its welds due to sigma phase change after 25 years of service. What is the life of 304H stainless steel and can its remaining life be predicted?

MARLOWE: This relates to 304 stainless steel material, 304H specifically. I know weve had discussions about this before at the NPRA meetings, and about Cat Crackers and concerns about what is the predicted age for how long can you live with 304 stainless steel material. Weve been concerned about that for quite a few years and in 95 we did find quite a few cracks in our overhead line between the third stage separator and our power recovery turbine. We found some cracks and we sampled those for sigma phase, some samples had up to 9 % sigma phase. Our ducting is over 20 years old, and we were getting these cracks, and we wanted to know if we were going to have a shorter life than we were anticipating. We found over 200 cracks at that time and we did repair them. We had welders in there almost the entire turnaround time, over three weeks, and were able to grind down and repair most of the cracks. Most of the cracks were related to cracks in the weld area or the heat affected area in the parent metal. But the majority of it was right around the heat affected area and the welds for the 308 rod material. Larrys going to have some comments in that direction. Between the 95 and the year 2000 turnarounds, we ended up developing some very serious cracks on stream. We developed an 18" crack along this area (Figure 17). This was along our 30" bypass line that goes around the PRT (Power Recovery Turbine), and it ties into a 54" line, where the two lines come together (Figure 18). We had to bring in specialty people since this was 1350oF material with catalyst fines coming out. We brought in some specialists with aluminum suits and cooling devices and were only able to work twenty to thirty minutes at a time. They had to put stiffeners across this crack area (Figure 19) and boxed it up on each end. Then they put additional material on top with valves to vent off away from themselves. It was a rather expensive repair and this didnt stop our problem. We had to do another one before our next planned turnaround. They estimated that they would be back within 40 days, and 40 days it was. So once it starts, you really have a big problem. We were able to get this 304H line out of service and change it during the turnaround, so we were glad to get this behind us. We still have a few other pieces of 304H that are over 20 years old, but theyre not in the same temperature cycle.

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FIGURE 17

FIGURE 18

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FIGURE 19

CARPER: Well, just looking at the picture there, Ive seen similar and it looks too familiar. The crack is through the center of the weld. We installed a PRT at one of our refineries in the early 80s. Shortly afterwards we began experiencing weld failures due to stress rupture. This forced us to look at weld metals. After several years, a weld metal study concluded E308 filler metal was not optimum. This resulted in changing our specifications from E308 to E347 filler type weld metals when welding 304 stainless steels. We found the stress rupture properties of E308 filler metal were about 80 percent of the parent metal at elevated temperatures. The design for this duct was to use minimal or no corrosion allowance. Use as thin of sections as practical and 100 percent radiograph the welds. In the mid 90s we experienced a failure through the middle of a weldment. Repairs consisted of replacing a section of the duct, decreasing the operating temperature and pressure, and developing a long term repair/replacement strategy. We eventually replaced several sections of duct in key areas and replaced the filler metal in many of the longitudinal seams. Currently we specify E347-16 as the filler metal when the operating temperature is above 1000F and use E308 when the operating temperature is below 1000F. We also recommend controlling the ferrite number below 6. I had an opportunity to visit one of our refineries in Europe earlier this year. The PRT was the same vintage. In looking at the system, the duct wall thickness was substantial when compared to the previous unit resulting in substantially lower hoop stresses. A result was they were not experiencing weld failures. ROBERT GOSSELIN (ExxonMobil Refining & Supply): Robert Gosselin, ExxonMobil, Beaumont. We've had problems, just like what you're talking about, but it wasn't as old as your line. We had a line that was in service for close to 26 years. We had problems all throughout the 26 years. We put a new line in. Less than 4 years, we had the same problem again. What we found - what you mentioned about the ferrite content - if it was too low, you had cracking when you welded. If it was too high, you had cracking when 29

you started up. We felt like the problem was during the startup going from low ambient temperatures to operating temperature. So we put acoustic emissions monitors in the locations where we had problems and kind of listened for cracks, basically. But EPRI talked about a different rod. It was, I dont remember now, it was an E1864, something like that. I know the numbers are wrong. E1682. We havent tried it yet, but were hoping maybe that will help. But I guess the only thing that Ive heard as far as a solution from the panel was basically thicker metals to give you lower stress to extend the life. Is that pretty much the only solution? I guess one of the concerns, one of the options that somebody proposed was use a different material. But I dont know what else. I think that anything else would be way too expensive. I guess Im asking if anybody had experience, even looking at a different metal, that was affordable to use? CARPER: We looked at other filler metals during the study discussed earlier. An alternate welding electrode was E16-8-2. We found this welding electrode was not readily available during a late 1980s project. The cost was prohibitive when compared to E347. E16-8-2 has about 95 to 105 percent of the stress rupture properties of the parent metal. Like I said earlier, one solution is to use thicker metal. BAZIL BURGESS (Premcor, retired): All we're talking about right now seems to be ductwork. Has anybody had any experience with cyclones? I've had sigma phase cracking after about ten to twelve years in cyclone welds. Is this common also? CARPER: Bazil, we've seen cracking in cyclones. A solution is to design the cyclones and especially the hanger system for lower stress. We have seen very little sigma phase cracking in our cyclones and we have one unit where the cyclones are 36-37 years old and another with cyclones 33 years old. BAZIL BURGESS (Premcor, retired): Also on the ductwork, has anybody considered using refractory lined carbon steel, because back in the late '80s, that's what most of the refineries were going to. MARLOWE: No, we had looked at just what other stainless steels would be acceptable for material. Since we weren't considering this line to be redesigned we stayed with the 304H, as we didn't have the time. We might look into that later. DEMARTINO: What would be the temperature of this, Bazil, if you were going to have a carbon steel and put a refractory on the front of the tube? This kind of points to carbon. What kind of temperatures are you looking at? BAZIL BURGESS (Premcor, retired): I've actually run overhead lines made out of stainless steel with AA22 in it at 1450oF design temperature at about 50 psig. We did replace that piping with carbon steel, 5" of abrasion

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resistant refractory at a later date, probably in the late 80s, early 90s. So that was the solution for us at the time for regenerator overhead line. DEMARTINO: Okay, but theres not an issue since you put such a massive amount of refractory that youve reduced the cold wall temperature. Do you need some kind of a membrane system, because youre riding the carbon? BAZIL BURGESS (Premcor, retired): Well, with what I just described, youre running about 400 o F - 500 o F shell temperature on that line, and youve increased the size of it. Again, the point is, youve increased the weight of it so youve got to go to new hanger designs and a whole lot of other things. But, with the problems we were running into with stainless, that looked like the best solution for us, because not only were we getting sigma phase cracking, we were getting thermal fatigue cracking, because the shell wall of the line was so thick that we were actually getting cracking on the outside due to expansion of the outside wall from pressure from the inside of the shell, and then when it tried to shrink, it couldnt. So we started getting cracking there, also. Between those two phenomena, we decided it was safer for us to go with the cold wall, when we had to change it. JOSEPH W. WILSON (Barnes and Click, Inc.): Bill Wilson with Barnes and Click. Just as a point of clarification, I believe the gentleman from Sun mentioned this was a line that was tied into a flue gas expander. In that particular circumstance, you wouldnt want refractory on that line at all, because if it comes loose and goes through the expander, it will take out the rotor pretty thoroughly.

Question 13. Is anyone experiencing problems with E309 stainless steel weld cracking in high temperature service and extended age (>10 years)?

MARLOWE: This question pertains to a problem that hit home with us. We have a reactor head that is a low chrome material, but it also has a SS clad liner inside of it. This was in the flue area of the plenum. Its all lined with a 410 strip material or a clad 405 material. And where they make the welds, the dissimilar metal welds for the attachment of the liner, they used a 309 rod. And as a result of that, we were suspicious that weve had a defect that has started and propagated at that location, During a run between 1995 and the year 2000, we did get a crack to the atmosphere in the dollar plate at the top of this head. It turned out to be about a 40" long crack along that area. But it had propagated itself all the way out from the liner dissimilar metal welder out to the surface.

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FIGURE 20

So it took some time to get to this condition and it was complicated by some flexing of the platform at the top. It was a combination of the defect being generated and then propagated by the flexing of this platform at the top. To make the repair, we ground out all the crack and went back in and got rid of the 309 rod connections, ground that out, too. Thats a picture (Figure 20). Here it is where we had to grind out the area where the old welds were, and then welded it back up with new 309 rod. So we ended up at the turnaround, went in and repaired all of the defect areas that we could find in the top of the head. Hopefully, well replace that head at our next outage. CARPER: As part of the study discussed earlier, we also looked at E309-16 weld rods. We found E309-16 welds to have poor stress rupture properties. There was also difficulty in controlling the ferrite number. The ferrite numbers ranged from 7 to 15 with an average around 11. Currently we restrain ourselves to using E309-16 for bimetallic structural welds and where the structure is not critical. Our metallurgists are recommending using Incoweld A and Inconel 182 filler metals for 300 series stainless steel to carbon steel bimetallic welds.

II:

ROTATING EQUIPMENT
Question 14. What is the state-of-the-art for air blower discharge check valves?

DROSJACK: The question here concerns check valves in the air blowers failing. And weve seen them do that once in a while. Whenever that occurs, the problem is you get the catalyst back there. You turn your air blower into a catalyst hopper. And thats not what they were designed for. And in terms of why is this a bad thing, the question is what happens? In the best of cases, youve got to get the catalyst out of the air blower. If youre really lucky, weve had the occasion where you can open the case screens and actually just pour it out.

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Thats kind of lucky, but more often than not, you have to open the machine up and clean it out physically. Okay, that stuff is going to take you a day, a few days. The next thing that occurs, even if you get the catalyst out, in a lot of cases, putting hot catalyst into the air blower cases, which really aren't high temperature machines, can cause them to distort, and you can end up with flange leaks and sometimes warping the things bad enough to cause the machines to rust. If you really get yourself in bad shape, you can end up with a more catastrophic failure. And in that case, you might be able to drop catalyst in the machine while it's still rotating, but what might be more likely is you don't know you've got catalyst in the bottom in the case and you restart the machine again, with some catalyst in there. If you have an axial air blower, you've got a good chance of blowing all the blades off of it. So if you look at the whole scenario, you're going to lose a day, two days, three days, maybe up to ten days if you're lucky, and have all the parts available. If you don't have spare rotors, if you do severe damage to the case, your time can go on up from there. But the issue here is it is not a good thing to have your check valves fail and let the catalyst get back into the machines. Some of the other guys here are going to talk about what kind of check valves we have and how they work. MARLOWE: We have an Atwood-Morrell check valve for this type of service and we have a couple of refinery locations that have this check valve. We have them in Toledo, also. We're always reconditioning this and repairing it at each outage. We've never really had an incident where it backflowed for us through the blowers. But we have had that situation at our Philadelphia Refinery, and they've had some serious backflows turning their blower into a catalyst hopper, like Mike mentioned. But they are changing their specification and they're looking at some improvements so they wanted me to pass along that they have a new design specification and Adams is a brand that is able to meet those new improvements. They're going to try the Adams in their unit this fall when they have their shutdown. They'll also have some kind of actuator that's going to have automatic flows on it, so it will be a little quicker response time. FARLEY: At KBR, we generally look at the Atwood-Morrell swingcheck or isocheck valve. It seems to be the world leader. Every time we've looked at units, it's the valve we tend to come across. And I'd like to reiterate what Mike talked about initially on some of these types of failures. These are not theoretical failures, OK? These things have happened. Units in the industry have been down 30 days because a check valve in this service failed. Insurance companies have estimated losses of upwards of $55 million from one incident of a check valve in this service failing. It's absolutely critical that this valve works. Having said that, a good way to make sure the valve works is to always do proper preventative maintenance (PM) checks on this valve. Generally, these valves have an actuator, they're counterweighted, and they have some sort of assist to help this valve close. It's important to periodically exercise these things. Make sure these valves aren't hung up or frozen in place. I think several locations have had problems where the proper PM was not done. These PM procedures were generally listed either in the technical bulletins from the valve manufacturers or in the original documentation with the valve. We always urge you to follow these PM

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procedures. Thats generally the most significant problem weve seen with these types of valves, that the PM procedures were not followed. BAZIL BURGESS (Premcor, retired): I can certainly testify to the problems they cause, because I had the opportunity to repair an axial blower that got hot catalyst in to it. But I would like to make one other point that some people might not think of, and I certainly didnt at the time. The first unit I worked on was a direct line up and down from the blower to the regenerator, a Peabody heater was right under the regenerator, and it was a straight drop to the axial blower. On the unit I worked on recently, the blowers were slightly farther away, and the piping actually had a trap, similar to what you have underneath a sink, where the air line went down and then up into the Peabody heater, and then that was actually above the level of the catalyst in the unit. And in that unit, although its a 50 year old Cat Cracker, from what Ive been able to see from the records, theyve never had a problem with catalyst getting back in their blowers. So you might want to take a look at piping configuration to help you prevent major damage in your blowers. UNKNOWN: Yes sir, I think this question was originally mine. What were looking for is an alternative to the flapper type check valve. Weve had all the bad experiences that the panel and other people have named. Except we have radial blowers, so we havent wrecked a blower. We have plugged it up where we had to take it apart several times. What Im wondering is has anybody had any luck with something like a trip valve? Not a trip throttle valve, but a trip valve like on a turbine or any other non-swing type check valve. BAZIL BURGESS (Premcor, retired): The first unit I worked on with the axial blower actually had a trip check valve on it. The problem we had is that we were not testing our trip mechanism and as a result, when the check valve was caught un-operated, it didnt work. So if you do get some kind of trip valve or trip check valve, you need to make sure that youve got a way of testing it without shutting your unit down while youre online, and that needs to be done at least once every three months. DARRYL BERTRAM (BP Amoco p.l.c.): Darryl Bertram, BP Australia. We recently installed a Mannesman axial movement check valve on our resid unit at Kwinana. And to date have had pretty good service from that. Its a fairly expensive option compared with the traditional check valve, but it offers quite light pressure drops compared with the normal lever operated swing check type valve. So that might be an option for the gentleman as something different to look at. FRED COLLIER (Williams Energy Services): Id just like to reiterate the fact that when youve got this check valve, PM is so important. And most of them have these big weighted arms on them and when you walk by those valves, if youll just shake those weighted arms - you cant move them far, but you can move them just enough to make sure that flapper stays loose. And if you love your blower, if you love your Cat Cracker, youd better shake that handle every once in a while.

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Question 15. How many refineries have a emergency lube oil supply tank that supplies lube oil in the case of a pump failure?

DROSJACK: In a number of our refineries, we have rundown tanks in the Cat Crackers and other units. Some of them are just a head tank. Others have nitrogen pressure on top in case the lube oil pumps give out for whatever reason, power outage, what have you. One of the things to understand about these, though, is theyre only rundown tanks. You cant have a big enough tank to run the machine until it stops. And you have to be tied into the trip so that you quit producing any head out of the blower, whatever is attached to, you shut stuff off. And it only gives you a very short period of time to run down to get most of the load off the machine and then its going to coast. We have not had serious incidents in my experience, in our Cat Crackers. But we did have a number of years ago a catastrophe at one of our refineries in which we had three associated ethylene plants with nine compressors. The one that had the rundown tanks did not damage any of the rotors. The two that didnt had to change out the rotors and it scored them pretty badly. Question 16. What factors should be considered in changing the main air blower driver from a steam turbine to a flue gas expander? DROSJACK: This concerns why or what you do if you want to change your main air blower driver from a steam turbine to a flue gas expander. And theres a couple of things youve got to look at that are pretty important. One is your pressure ratio. How much power you can actually generate from the expander itself, and see if its worth the cost. The second one is turnaround intervals. The expander power recovery trains are going to be one of the shortest lived machinery components in the Cat Cracker. And if you look at the life - theres some discussion of that later most everybody can get two years, a few people have gotten six years, and youre going to be somewhere in the middle. And part of the issue you have to look at is how long youre planning to run this unit between turnarounds, because its quite likely that that power recovery train will be the limiting factor on the run length between turnarounds. Another part of this is what your separation system does. The separators are one of the big drivers in terms of how long an expander can run. In a minute I will show some pictures about the ugly things that can happen if your separation system isnt up to snuff. If you dont have a good one, dont think about an expander power recovery turbine in there, because youre not going to be very happy. And then maybe one last factor. If you put one of these in, there has to be room. Youre going to need maybe 15, 20, 30 feet of physical space to drop the machine in. And then another 20 or 30 feet of horizontal run from the inlet pipe if you want to have any hope of being successful. So one of the things you do have to have is a fairly long open space at the end of your air blower to get this thing in. Those are some of the principle issues in terms of just deciding. And one of the big things is economics. Its going to cost you a fair amount of money to put one of these in. And the question is whether that power recovery is really worth the cost of putting that machine in.

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BAZIL BURGESS (Premcor, retired): A couple of other things you probably need to consider is that normally, if you lose or have to dump your air or something like that, you risk over-speeding the entire train. So you need to make sure that youve got some kind of mechanism to control the speed of the unit so that you can dump the flue gas going into your expander before it gets above some kind of critical speed, dictated by your vendor. Thats one thing you need to look at. And the other thing you need to look at is these are going to start up differently from a standard blower. Normally, your expander will provide 100% of your power during operation or maybe some percentage lower, depending on how you design it. But you have to have either a steam turbine and/or an electric motor to start up and get up to operating speed. The unit I worked on used a steam turbine up to about 3200 RPM, and then kicked in a 4,000 HP motor to come up to speed, the remainder of the time. And that motor was an induction motor and acted as a brake also, to slow down the overspeed so that the control systems could catch it. Other than that, with a little bit of care and thought in installing it, I dont see any reason why you shouldnt be able to get four to five years out of an expander. We started off not quite knowing how to operate it. And by the time we learned how to operate it and how to maintain it, we were easily expecting four to five years out of it. Question 17. What is the affect of the third stage separator on the power recovery turbines performance? DROSJACK: There are two effects of malperformance or lack of performance on a separation system. One is simply that passing too much catalyst will cause fouling. It will cause deposition of catalyst either on the blades or in the worst case, between the blade tips and the shroud. And this is what can happen (Figure 21). If you look at this, this isnt supposed to have a piece missing. Between the blade tips and the shroud, the machine may have 60 to 100 or so thousandths clearance. If that fills up with catalyst and the blade tips rub, you can generate thermal cracks and then youll cause a piece of blade to fall off. The crack can progress and have a piece fall out. This thing is about as big - I have a blade up here if anybody wants to look at it later - its about half as big as a half dollar. And in terms of this machine, that accounts for about 1 or 2 mils extra vibration. And the issue here is if you lose these pieces, you unbalance the rotor, and you get to the point where you simply cant stand the vibration. This is a rotor that just came off (Figure 22), and if you look closely, you can see the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Those are the pieces that fell off during the course of about six months or a year on this particular machine. Before we brought this down, it was putting out about ten mils vibration. To have some perspective on that, you could feel this thing moving the ground about 300 yards away from the machine. And the only reason we ran to this point in time was simply to get to a particular time when we could shut this down. This type of failure is not that unusual. Many of the expanders will have tip cracking. An awful lot is seen from the catalyst deposition. And then some of them will progress to have the blade tips fall off. So thats the deposition issue.

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FIGURE 21

Next slide shows another problem that can occur (Figure 23). This is erosion. If the separators are not separating out the large particles, passing too many of them, theyll blast the metal away on the machine. And these particular blades are made of waspalloy. Theyre coated with D-Gun. And thats pretty hard stuff, and you see what happens here. This has gone through the D-Gun into the waspalloy. This is after two years of operation. At the end of four years, there would have been a hole through here, or somewhere between three and four years. And a lot of that is tied to how your separator performs, whether or not youre going to make it. When this occurs, one of the things that happens is youre going to lose performance. Youre going to lose horsepower, because youve screwed up the aerodynamic flowpath. The other thing that can happen, this erosion will progress to the point where pieces start to flake off the end of the blade, and again you get into unbalance. This kind of phenomenon occurs in all expanders. The question is how much you see in yours, whether indeed the erosion is sufficient to shorten your run length and whether it can run as long as you want.

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FIGURE 22

FIGURE 23

MARLOWE: We were concerned about these issues before our spring turnaround. We have a Shell third stage separator thats been in service since 74 and weve never done any major work on it. Weve had some issues with expansion joint cracking, but as far as the ceramic sleeves that are in there and the swirl tube arrangement, weve never really done anything with it just inspected it, patched the ceramics a little bit with some mud and let it go. But the concern was when does it 38

become a problem? What kind of clearances do you need to look for? What kind of wear should you really see on a third stage separator? So getting involved with that investigation and finding out what to look for, was really the challenge. I did contact Jason Horwege at Shell Technology, and he had some different scenarios for us to look at. He had one scenario if you saw some wear quite often, and had problems with your unit periodically, or another if you had a long run. He gave us something else to look at, and some of the things that I can share with you. He said the design clearance was originally for a thermal growth plus approximately 0.1" for the fit up between the ceramic can and the stainless steel swirl tube. He said that the performance loss is proportional to Pi, as the Pi number times that clearance. He related that a 5% increased opening would be like a 5% efficiency loss in your third stage separator. So we looked at our history, looked at some of the different criterion that he gave us, and determined that wed been running well for quite a long time and we really didnt know what our clearances were, but we assumed that over time, we had had some wear. So we took Jasons numbers and figured that we would be somewhere between 30% and 50% range for a replacement of the ceramics and the stainless steel swirl tubes. This would probably guarantee a safe run for another four years. So he agreed to that. And so we decided that of the 120 that we had, wed take out 40 in loss. That was our game plan for the turnaround, and when we went in there, I just marked the ones that had the worst clearances. When we looked at it, the clearance had probably doubled in size over that 20 or 30 years, but it still was not that noticeable. So we did have a good running unit and we didnt have a problem up to this point. Replacing the number of ceramics and swirl tubes that we did will only help avoid a future problem and make our next run on the separator as uneventful as in the past. DROSJACK: One more comment following onto that. This was after a two-year run. On this same unit, applying some of those fixes, after another two years, we had blades which didnt have any erosion. And it does work. One of the other things thats done with that is you can use isokinetic testing on the stack dust samples to determine how much catalyst is coming out and what the size distribution is and use that as one of the triggers as to when to work on the separator. CARPER: Last fall, we had the opportunity to go inside a third-stage separator. The separator was in service since 1981 and ignored throughout the years. This was one of the first opportunities to take a good thorough look. There are 144 tubes in this separator, one of the larger separators. Thirty-eight percent of the top outlet tubes to tubesheet welds were cracked. Over 85% of bottom tube sheet welds were also cracked. The ceramic liners were in relatively good shape. I cant remember precisely how many we replaced. It was an insignificant number. The cracks were in the welds. Again, we suspected a E308 filler metal issue. Tomorrow during the workshop session a discussion on PRTs and separators is planned.

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III:

TURNAROUND/MAINTENANCE/INSPECTION
Question 18. How do you inspect an expansion joint when the unit is in operation or during turnaround?

CARPER: This is a question we have struggled with for many years. There really isnt a good answer. Sorry, but your options are pretty much limited, about what you can and cant do. The items of interest are the bellows and hardware. Today, bellows are usually packed. You do not have a good method of inspecting internally unless you remove the internal shroud. Shroud removal is risky. You risk damaging the bellows. Similarly for an outside inspection. We recommend removal of the external shroud and penetrant testing the bellows including the attachment welds. Internally, we recommend ensuring the packing is intact and repairing any damage due to erosion. We are hearing stories of people using fiberoptics to inspect bellows. I am not aware of any of our plants attempting this and if anybody has any stories, please share with the audience. We also recommend inspecting the joints for travel from the cold to hot positions and comparing the actual travel to the design travel. If its traveling way beyond its limits, find out why, make the adjustments. There just really isnt a good way to inspect an expansion joint. MARLOWE: If you do have a problem with your expansion joints, its good to inspect them before the turnaround. So if you can get the shrouds off, you can get some scaffolding up there and get a look at them. At least you can find out if youve got a problem before you come down. So I recommend that you try to get an inspection and bring in one of the expansion joint inspectors. And thats what we did, and we were happy to get that all done ahead of time so we had a known indication if we had a problem within the shroud. LEWIS FREDERICKSON (Chevron Products Company): Ive got some more specimens of my failures. First of all, for those of you that havent been inside an expansion joint, this is a sample of the braided metal hose that seals the gap between the moving parts of a packed expansion joint (PHOTO 2x).

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These braided metal hoses come in different form and with different attachment methods from the different vendors. My recommendation when youre buying a new expansion joint is to get the closest thing to bullet proof you can find. If this braided metal hose is intact in your expansion joint when youre inspecting it, its very difficult to see anything thats going on inside the expansion joint. You can just check the external refractory and the condition of the internal sleeve. If the braided hose is damaged or out of place, it can be the forerunner of bigger problems. We shut down one of our FCC units last summer. We inspected a two-element cold wall expansion joint in the regenerated catalyst standpipe. Many cold wall expansion joints depend on a kaowool pillow (Figure 3x) for insulation to keep the bellows elements cool. As has been discussed previously, the two major failure mechanisms for expansion joints are corrosion because they get too cold or embrittlement because they get too hot. These kaowool pillows also come in several different forms from different vendors. The expansion joint we looked at last summer had this kind of insulation. Our inspectors found the braided hose displaced in the upper quadrant in both elements. We inspected behind the braided hoses with a boroscope, and found the wire mesh part of this kaowool pillow. We did not find the kaowool. It looked like the kaowool had been sucked out of the wire mesh covering. Of course, this meant that we had lost the insulation in this location. We stuffed new sections of kaowool pillow into the void to prevent the bellows from overheating for another year of operation.

PHOTO 3X

BAZIL BURGESS (Premcor, retired): How you test your expansion joint really depends on what kind youve got. Basically on the market now, you have a single ply bellows and a two-ply bellows that is either testable or has an online indicator on it. If youve got a single ply bellows, about the only thing you can do is a visual test on it, unless you want to go to the expense of putting blinds inside the line and doing an air test on it. Thats usually not allowable, due to time and several other considerations. About ten years ago, several manufacturers started coming out with what we called a two-ply testable bellows. Both plies on the bellows are designed for the full pressure and temperature of the system. There is normally a little wire mesh inside of the two plies, and that gap had a vacuum pulled on it to as near absolute as they can get it, and then the bellows is 41

sealed before its welded onto the shell. Some of them, you have to test those or put a pressure gauge on them or something of that nature. At least one manufacturer has a device that will indicate whether that vacuum has been broken or not. My recommendation is to put two-ply testables and at least one manufacturer I know of can put these bellows on your existing expansion joints for you, if you want them to. But that would be my recommendation, simply because even when youre online, if one bellows goes, youve got the other bellows that is in there, in place, that will carry you to the next turnaround and you can either test it before the turnaround and during the turnaround, and that will tell you whether you need to replace it. But youre operating safely at all times, and thats the main consideration. Ive worked in too many of the single plies that have cracked and had to be repaired. LEWIS FREDERICKSON (Chevron Products Company): I just want to add to my earlier comments. I fully agree with Bazils recommendation for two-ply testable expansion joints, monitored onstream and also vacuum tested during shutdowns to make sure youve got no leaks on the plies. Now when we install new expansion joints, we are also working with the vendors to include a temperature monitoring system so we can tell what temperature the convolutions are actually operating at. We have those on a couple of expansion joints so far, and we have found some very surprising results. Expansion joints that we expected to be running hot are running colder than we want them to be. We have actually added more external insulation. ROBERT BROYLES (Senior Flexonics Pathway): Bob Broyles, Senior Flexonics Pathway. I just wanted to reinforce the issue regarding bellows temperature and monitoring the bellows temperature, because we have been following this issue of dewpoint corrosion now for several years. I believe it is a significant problem. I do have with me a sample of bellows, 625 bellows, that have failed due to dewpoint corrosion, for those who might be interested. But bellows temperature measurement should definitely be part of monitoring of bellows operation online. Question 19. How do you determine when it is time to retire an expansion joint?

CARPER: Retiring bellows is a risk management question and this up to the individual refineries. Some of the refineries prefer to run two to three campaigns between bellows replacement. There is a limited amount of data on the number of runs between replacement. Currently we are extending the run lengths on some units and are very much concerned about when to you retire the bellows. Previously we saw three to four year run lengths and now we are attempting five to six year run lengths between turnarounds. You figure 3 six year run lengths between bellows replacement - eighteen years between bellows replacement. Is that the time to retire bellows? Basically, your historical data, is probably the best guide. Last year we replaced three expansion (rotation) joints, excuse me, two expansion joints. These joints were in service over 25 years and had not experienced any problems with the bellows. They were initially purged joints but the purge was disconnected several years ago allowing the bellows to fill with catalyst. These joints were on a spent catalyst riser, side-by-side unit. The reason for replacement was concern for bellows age and the hinge hardware was failing.

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We have another expansion joint at one of our refineries that was placed in service in 1956. Still in service, never replaced. The bellows metallurgy is 347 stainless steel. We do not know when we are going to replace the bellows. I can assure you, when the time comes we will have a nightmare due to accessibility. We know we will have to face replacement one of these days! So, the smart answer is, retire them right before they fail. But youve got to find that period in time. The next best answer is not to use expansion joints, period. This is the strategy we attempt to achieve. Earlier this year I had the opportunity to visit one of our refineries in Europe. This unit has a PRT also. You think you have nightmares, this unit has 38 expansion joints from the top of the regenerator to the precipitator inlet. FARLEY: This question was covered some in the 1998 session. I think it was question number 13. And I believe that question talked a little bit about dual-ply bellows. This is a question that we get asked quite a bit. And from what KBR can tell, we generally see people in the industry going between 10 and 20 years for replacement of expansion joints. This is based upon the inspection reports from previous turnarounds. And really, the impression I have is that its based more on heightened concern at each location where people have the concern about making it through the next run. We see that driving a lot of replacements for expansion joints. Really, youd say the criteria are pretty shaky, but 10 to 20 years is what we typically see. BAZIL BURGESS (Premcor, retired): I had a lot of trouble in the 80s with single-ply bellows, and Ive never managed to get enough courage up to extend a run on a single-ply bellows over 15 years. So, you know, if thats any help anywhere between 10 and 15 years on a single-ply bellows is the best I could recommend. Again, the recommendation is replacing any single-ply youve got with two-ply, and then run until that indicator tells you youve lost one of those plies. And then you can run until the next shutdown on the one thats remaining. Question 20. Is there a better way to remove thick wall refractories than by chipping? Hydrodemolition? Explosive demolition? Robotics? Please describe your experience with any of these new methods. DEMARTINO: Let me run down what I found out in talking to some of the refineries. Robotics is used on a very limited basis. If you have maybe a single line where you can put a single person in it, robotics may be a good method of repair or removal. Explosives, I found out, are rarely used, due to the fact that if you dont have the proper explosives, theres bulging of the units that can occur. Im not saying it doesnt work, but you have to have a relatively scientific methodology to it. Weve seen a lot of the hydrodemolition come of age. The problem youre going to have there is taking care of the water, because theres a tremendous amount of water that runs out the bottom of the unit. Sometimes theyll take a 30 cu. yd. dumpster, run the water into the dumpster, and then let the solid settle out and let the water come out over the top, so theres some less sensitive issues with the back end of the plant where they would treat the water. Still, everything were seeing, its mostly chipping guns. And there are machines out there that are relatively slow hitting, but theyre very hard hitting, and they can shear through 43

bolts, and they can shear through the shell. And they even have the capabilities to remove the vibration cast lines. Theres also a rivet buster. Anyway, thats the most widely used thing. We had one of our customers last year on an RCC turnaround that had never heard of them, and they flew up to our office to witness ARC spray metalizing and the demolition with the rivet buster. Typically, in one coked up area in the refinery, they put seven shifts in for the coke removal. They were finished in one. So it just gives you an idea of some of the ways that materials can be moved. BAZIL BURGESS (Premcor, retired): Ive had a lot of experience in trying to do that. A couple of points that need to be brought out. Fresh refractory that even if its cured, will be easier to take out, but the longer thats in your unit, the more coke that is embedded in the refractory on your risers, which is mainly where the stuff is, the harder that will be to get out. Now after two years, I managed to do some hydrodemolition on a riser with the same company, with the same equipment, with the same people, two years later, they couldnt cut the stuff. Ive done it with chipping. It takes a lot of time and its almost not worth it. The best recommendation I could come up with is let your refractory go as long as you possibly can, (Ive taken it down to three inches) and then plan on doing complete replacement the next shutdown. And by complete replacement, I mean just cut the riser out and put a new riser in. Thats actually going to be the cheapest way for you to do that job and the quickest. Question 21. How do you remove coke from cyclones and other areas in the reactor? How do you know when you are done? What safety and operational concerns have to be addressed? DROSJACK: Were talking about removal of coke and I think the answers are pretty similar in that the chipping guns are the most common application in our facilities. We did do some work attempting to use explosives. When we did that, it got some of the coke off, but the cyclones didnt like it too much, and we rattled them pretty badly and damaged them. The same comment on the high pressure water. One of the issues with the coke is just the ability to get the guns access to the coke as well as the fact that youve got to dispose of a lot of dirty water. CARPER: We saw one unit which filled solid with coke from the top of the cyclones to the top head. The reactor dome steam was cut off as an energy conservation measure. This was a real nightmare for removal. There were pockets of pyrophoric iron sulphide which ignited upon exposure to air. We ended up breaking up the coke using blasting technology. One detonation was too close to the vessel and resulted in a hole in the top head. The bulk of the removal was completed with chipping guns and rivet busters. Once removed, we inspected the cyclone hangers and found deformation due to the excess load. The hangers were strained from the weight of the coke and the restraints imposed by the incompressibility of the coke. The coke formed while the cyclone hangers were thermally expanded. During shutdown or cool down, the hangers thermally contracted and the coke restrained the contraction. We found the hangers had severe deformation. The word of warning is, if you get into a similar situation that bad, take a look at your hangers system for distortion. Typically cyclone hanger systems are not designed for the excess 44

weight of coke. They are designed for the weight of the cyclone plus the weight of the catalyst. So you might want to review your designs. FARLEY: Not so much related to removal of coke, but instead to minimize coke formation, especially in units that run resid (a portion of the feed that boils at very, very high temperatures), dome steam can be very useful to minimize coke formation in the top head of the vessel. Important warning, though, is that the steam has to be bone dry. You dont want to have any liquid in that steam that goes into the top of the vessel. Thats been known to cause more problems than the dome steam ring not being there. Other steps to minimize coke formation have been addressed earlier. Riser operation can greatly help minimize coke formation.

Question 22. What innovative techniques improve turnaround effectiveness? Inspection (thermal imaging, digital imaging, etc.) scaffolding blinding refractory removal chemical cleaning COUSAR: One task that is always in the critical path of turnarounds is scaffolding. Once you are down and obtain vessel entry, scaffolding is the next step. We have successfully used the Excel brand of scaffolding. This scaffolding, in our opinion, is the most easily erected scaffolding that we have seen to date. This scaffolding helped shave a tremendous amount of time off our recent turnaround. Two identical scaffolding jobs performed within our Regenerator are compared (Figure 24) Regenerator Scaffolding Comparisons). They were built to perform exactly the same function to get to specific places in the upper regenerator.

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The scaffoldings unique design allows construction of most angles required. This allowed our inspectors to have the best footing available when crawling up in and around the cyclones. Other benefits of Excel scaffolding are that no tools are needed for assembly, it has built in ladder components; personnel can climb through hatched decks, node point rings allow 360 degree placing of up to 8 bars, vertical leg heights are in 11 increments up to 9 7, and diagonal braces are not needed with gusset designed bars. (Figure 25 Excel Scaffolding). This jig-stand that we built during our October '99 turnaround is an example of the versatility of Excel scaffolding (Figure 26 Jig Stand). It was a fully engineered structure with PE certification designed to hold 300,000 lbs. It was designed and erected in 12 hours by 5 men.

FARLEY: There's been a big push the last several years. Once oil is out of the unit, the issue is to minimize time until maintenance can get into the unit. And a lot of people think chemical cleaning is the way to speed up that time, and therefore shorten the overall turnaround duration. This was a question that came up in the 1998 session here. Basically, several people have 46

proprietary processes to do this and some of the ones that have been mentioned are U.L. Zyme Flow and Phillips Lifeguard Process. These processes will actually remove benzene and all hydrocarbon (zero LEL), so by the time the vessel is opened up, generally you have pretty good working conditions for maintenance. The issue is that these services are not free. There is a cost that goes with these chemical cleaning methods. You have to look at the time savings versus the price you pay to do chemical cleaning. My personal experience has been pretty good with the processes. Ive had pretty good luck with cleaning the fractionation systems and I have seen them pay for themselves. I urge people doing this for the first time to devote serious effort to working with the contractor you choose to make sure this goes smoothly. It does not take that much of a schedule delay to give up a significant portion of your cost savings. MARLOWE: On our last turnaround, we used thermal imaging ahead of time to try to determine where we had problems. And as I talked about before on the regenerator wall, that gave us an idea how many square feet we had in our major problem area, but it also helped us find out through thermal imaging any other spots that we would need to repair. So it helped us with our planning. Our inspectors all had digital picture cameras. We had six or eight of those during the outage, and we recommend that highly. We could take those pictures the same day and take them to an extra work request meeting and talk to our managers about this repair. It helped tremendously in getting the word across and getting the explanation as to why we need to do repairs. And also that was available for a turnaround report almost immediately after the turnaround. And we brought in inspectors who could help us write the reports right off the bat, so those are all good things to have for these outages. CARPER: One of our refineries has a standard 30" gate valve in the reactor overhead line. During each turnaround, the refinery pulls the bonnet to remove the coke. The valve is used only during startup. During shutdown, a blind is installed. Prior to startup, the blind is pulled and the valve closed. The valve is opened during startup and the disk locked open with a pin. Theoretically, this procedure saves time during startup. Scaffolding was mentioned previously and I just wanted to share a recent experience. Last weekend we hired a contractor who used rope access technology for an inspection effort inside a regenerator. Let us call the experience a learning experience with limited success. We unexpectedly shutdown a unit and needed to look inside the regenerator for the cause of a catalyst loss. Term the experience as a limited success, we learned a lot, learned limitations and applications. This technology is something you might want to consider. DEMARTINO: Oh, here are the demolition hammers (see Figure 2, page 7). All it is is a very slow hitting, 40 lb. hammer thats made to shear through vibration casting and coke. And just to touch on the coke, Ive gotten a couple of samples and I had them sent up to Rutgers in Livingston, New Jersey. I had them soaked in liquid carbon dioxide, and the teacher pulled them out, and youd think he would smash it with a hammer. Nothing happened. So the next thing we were going to try was CO2 blasting, hoping we could thermal cycle it back and forth to ease removal. But based on putting it in a frozen environment, tapping it, not a damn thing happened. Thats

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our method of removal for refractory, even a vibration casting; we get some results, but its not great. Its not a place you want to be chipping. BAZIL BURGESS (Premcor, retired): Id like to add to what Larry Carper commented on. In the Lima refinery, we had a 36" valve in the position between the regenerator reactor and the fractionator. And we had the same problem that hes discussing where it would coke up during the run, nothing we could do to stop it. And in our 94 shutdown, we replaced that valve with a through conduit valve, which has a normal block and bleed system on it. Its built into part of the valve mechanism. And we have had several instances, now, of being able to use that valve. In fact, one time we had to use it was right after a fire, which was right underneath the valve. In every instance, the valve opened and closed when we needed it to, and we were able to document a 24-hr savings over blinding on startup and shutdown to justify the cost of the valve. DARRYL BERTRAM (BP Amoco p.l.c.): Darryl Bertram, BP Australia. Just following on Larrys comments about rope access, at our Kwinana refinery, we have made pretty extensive use of rope access techniques. Typically, for these unplanned, unscheduled shutdowns where process engineering might just like to have a look in cyclones and what-not. Its very important, though, from a safety perspective, to get the right sort of people involved, to have the people who, if youre going to use your own people for it, to make sure theyre trained, and most importantly, quite confident in the techniques. But its a worthwhile thing for inspecting areas where its unlikely youll find a large amount of work to do, but you do need to have a look. KEITH E. BLAIR (Valero Refining Co.): Keith Blair, Valero, Paulsboro, NJ. I am hoping to poll the audience on the question. Weve had a running controversy among refineries as to the effectiveness and the viability of washing down a regenerator as you immediately shut down a unit, open it up and want to get as much catalyst out as possible. There are varying philosophies saying that the washing down is a great thing, it gets rid of a lot of catalyst. But then, theres also the drawback of where it goes after youve washed it down. And I would like to see if through a show of hands, if each refiner can possibly have one person raise their hands, to see if they do wash them down? HAZLE: If I understand correctly, youre washing down the regenerator with water. How many do that? Washing down a regenerator with water to remove catalyst? Four. CARPER: We typically wash down the regenerator in order to improve the dust situation and enhance the inspection effort. Our metallurgists recommend using a 2% soda ash solution for the regenerator internals. Like chicken soup, you are not sure of the benefit but, there is no harm. KENNETH BLAIR (Valero Refining): I understand that. I guess the question I really was placing was where does it go? How do you get it out? What do you do with it when it comes out? And does anybody find that to be of a major drawback to doing it in the first place?

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CARPER: The water is collected and properly disposed. KEN GOTTSELIG (Koch Petroleum Group): Im giving a talk tomorrow on our incident in the regenerator where we were soda ash washing and ended up with through-wall cracks of the regenerator wall, the carbon steel portion. So if anybody wants to know more about it, you can talk to me or come over to the presentation tomorrow. DONALD F. SHAW (Carmagen Engineering, Inc.): I just wanted to add or reinforce, I think somebody on the panel mentioned earlier to reduce downtime, I think a lot of our refineries have started integrating the dryout process with a startup procedure and not where youre drying out refractories, not treat it as a separate operation. And that may be something people want to look at. FRED COLLIER (Williams Energy Services): Washing a regenerator with water is pretty dangerous, especially if youve got stainless steel inside it. 304 Stainless is really susceptible to polythionic acids. And its a triangle, youve got moisture, air and sulfur, and when youre putting water in there, youve got a very important part of that triangle. So Id be very careful about putting water inside regenerators. Theres a lot of ways of getting that dust down besides putting water in there. So you ought to think about that. It would be very disastrous. LEWIS FREDERICKSON (Chevron Products Company): In response to the question about washing down the regenerator, Chevron tries to avoid doing that due to all of the stainless steel components. When we have done it we built a dam underneath the regenerator collect the catalyst and then suck it up with a vacuum truck and haul it away. We dont think our refinery sewers can handle the amount of catalyst that we generate from washing the regenerator. Question 23. What innovative contracting strategies reduce turnaround duration and cost and/or improve effectiveness. COUSAR: We have implemented three innovative contracting strategies at Williams. The first is what we call the dream team approach. This approach allows for one contractor for each required discipline. The dream team is a collection of specific contractors that provide specific services (Figure 27 Dream Team). If a company is very good at pipe welding, let them weld pipe. The same follows with scaffolding, insulating, refractory lining and so on. By keeping the scope of work for each contractor down, we keep that contractors best people focused on their particular scopes of work. By selecting companies to provide personnel for one particular craft, you get their best people. If you expect them to provide all crafts, they will end up subcontracting the work. This tends to cause your top-notch crews to sink into mediocrity. Most organizations will need to add a contractor to help administrate all the contracts and track the time. This method also allows the flexibility to contract with the individual contractors a variety of contracts to suit their work (i.e. time and material, lump sum, etc..). The second strategy is the use of what we call a SWAT Team. We plan for and budget a select group of crackerjack boilermakers, pipefitters, and fire/hole watch personnel on both the 49

day and night shifts. This group of 12 to 16 people per shift makes up the SWAT Team. This team is used to perform work at the sole discretion of the project/turnaround manager. Whenever a problem arises or an area needs speeding up, simply point and shoot. This group helps keep things on or ahead of schedule as well as takes care of larger items that come up unexpectedly. This was a very effective tool for us during our recent turnaround.

The third strategy is the use of the target price contract. The target price contract is similar to a lump-sum contract, with both parties sharing in overruns and underruns. This contract simply allows the two parties to identify and agree upon the suppliers and contractors that will work together. It is all about setting a common goal with incentives that drive each party through a high degree of teamwork. This unique concept allows the comfort of lump-sum contracting, yet it also provides the flexibility to purchase goods and to contract services that are preferred without the dreaded change order. Significant changes in scopes are agreed upon and taken into account in the total target price. DEMARTINO: I would just have a question. It appears you're hand-picking a few guys from each company. There's got to be a what-if scenario, and it happened to me last November. I was fully involved in two Cat Cracker turnarounds, and I had another 100 people doing other jobs across the country. And we failed pretty well on one of our turnarounds. We couldn't send one of our best customers some of our best people. And do you ever get faced with that kind of scenario? COUSAR: We maintain excellent relationships with our key contractors, and we get them involved early in the turnaround planning process. We let them know in advance what we expect as well as encourage them to help develop the turnaround plan. We do insist on getting the contractors best people, and if they cannot be provided to us, we will seek alternate contractors. DEMARTINO: Okay. The problem I see with that scenario is, you have the Exxons and Mobils of the United States, now. And some of the other big mergers happen, and I had conversation with Exxon and Mobil about this. They have the biggest hammer in the country, now, and they 50

demand that they get the right people all the time. And somehow, someday soon, thats not going to be fair to the other refiners. We demand. And its not going to happen on every job. It cant happen on every job. COUSAR: I agree, but the combination of the relationships we maintain with our contractors and the involvement in planning we give to our contractors has been successful for us thus far. DEMARTINO: One of the things weve done is come up with a strategy which I guess some of the other people have used out here. For a lot of the T&M (time and materials) work that we do for the refinery industry, my rates include all of my companys own equipment. There's no way to nickel and dime the owner companies, much to my dislike. So our day shift and night shift rates include all the equipment, include all the per diems, and even go so far as to include the mobilization and demobilzation fleets. So they see one set of rates, and there are no hidden costs for an extra 10 or 15 chipping guns per shift. So that's kind of a unique way. Since we started doing that, we haven't lost a contract that we bid. BAZIL BURGESS (Premcor, retired): One thing that we did at the Lima Refinery is set up an engineering team with both maintenance engineers and technical experts on metallurgies, piping and what have you as a trouble-shooting team. Your inspectors are always finding problems. And these people, their sole purpose on the refinery during the shutdown is to come up with solutions for those problems, and it takes it out of your supervisor's hands, it gets it right up to the managers, and it helps speed changes through your system when they're needed. The other thing that I've seen done in the past is most of the time you're always wondering where you're going to get air, where you're going to put welding machines. I've seen six and eight packs stacked up on the deck where you know you're going to be doing a lot of welding. This normally saves a lot of time with the welder trying to find where his machine has to be adjusted and that type of thing. And then if you need air, on your structure in particular, what I've seen done is an extra pipe run up the structure with hose stations on it so you can hook up portable machines down at the bottom to provide air all the way up the structure. You don't have to worry about running hoses. You don't have to worry about large hoses, anyway. You don't have to worry about pressure drops in your piping up there to where you need the air. So you've got enough air for your jack hammers or anything else you need. This can all be done prior to the shutdown, and all you've got to do is hook a short welding lead and run it into the unit when you get it open. That's all.

IV:

PROCESS/PERFORMANCE-RELATED ISSUES
Question 24. What are the driving forces for selecting catalyst blends? selectivity/yield hardware changes erosion/attrition

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COUSAR: Refineries select from a variety of catalysts to meet specific yield slates based on economic factors. Because we operate a resid FCC, we utilize both fresh catalyst and equilibrium catalysts to provide our conversion as well as bottoms upgrading. We rely on the fresh catalyst to provide the foundation of our catalytic conversion and selectivity. It is formulated to achieve a desired yield pattern as well as be resistant to attrition, thermal deactivation, and metals deactivation. The purchased equilibrium catalyst (Ecat) provides an economic alternative to fresh catalyst that allows us to maintain unit activity by controlling metals levels and at times has supplemented for catalyst losses. We have evolved over the last several years from using primarily Ecat and supplementing with fresh catalyst to using primarily fresh catalyst and supplementing with Ecat. This approach has become a necessity in order to achieve our selected yields as our cat feed has continuously gotten heavier and the metals and con carbon levels have increased. We also add various catalyst additives to make more subtle changes in the yield structure. Additives such as ZSM-5 influence the yield of LPG olefins. These types of additives are used as an adjustment knob to tweak a yield pattern to achieve a certain yield structure, but the primary catalyst used to drive our cat is the fresh catalyst. FARLEY: I stress working with your refinery economic planning group when you look at catalyst formulations; these guys are pretty valuable in giving you direction as to where you want to shift operation. Do you need more LPG, more gasoline, is octane important? Its really important for the process people in the operation to have an understanding of this. And you get that understanding by working with the economic group. In terms of things like hardware changes that drive catalyst shifts, theres really not that many. You look at recent revamps and consider the recent technology pieces that are used, and from our experience, the number one thing we see that shifts a catalyst blend would be something like a riser termination device. There are a lot of different names for these types of devices, but basically they all fall under the category of something that reduces residence time in the reactor vessel. Generally, people start looking at a lot higher activity catalyst in the FCC after this type of revamp to recover some conversion. There have been some cases where its just not possible to get the activity on existing catalyst that refiners want. So theres been a catalyst change associated with that. Other revamps that may have, in select cases, a catalyst change, would be feed nozzles. Generally, you can lose a little bit of octane with a feed nozzle revamp. And in some locations, thats pretty important. Octane barrels may have very high value. You want to do something to recover that octane. That may not be catalyst, it may be temperature. But catalyst is one option for that. Changing reaction system residence times (changing volume in the riser) may necessitate a change in catalyst. Id also stress that in todays environment, its pretty interesting where you have a lot of product specifications that are very important today that werent important, or not as important ten years ago. Things like gasoline olefin content. And you see some pretty severe catalyst changes being made to make these specifications. I think people need to start looking at something like an olefin barrel value. You dont see that commonly in the U.S. today, but its a real problem. You look at units in Japan and places in the U.S., gasoline olefin content is very important in selecting catalyst.

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MARLOWE: We have high velocities in our system at Toledo, and thats related to the cyclones so we do have a higher attrition, probably, than we need. Its not a selection criteria at our location. And its really not a selection criteria anywhere in our refineries in the Sun system. But you can select catalyst blends with hardness considerations. And with less ability to break down or attrite and create much finer particles than you want. So that is something that you can work out, but you do have to do that in your own location with the requirements that you have there. ROBERT A. LUDOLPH (Sunoco, Inc.): Just to add to some of the comments that Jim made, in the area of hardware changes. In almost every location that we made hardware changes, especially when we upgraded our feed nozzles, and in a couple of cases where we changed the riser residence time, meant that there was a major change in the catalyst formulations that we used in the unit. In some cases, we went to an activity change, but we found pretty quickly that we needed a selectivity change along with it. And in particular, we found that there were some technologies that some of the suppliers offered that we couldnt take advantage of because they offered active ingredients that for whatever reason, we couldnt employ. When we put in those technologies, we found we opened up the portfolio more, and we had more options, especially seasonally. When it comes to erosion and attrition, Ill also add to that fluidization. Weve found in some of our units that fluidization is more of a concern than erosion or attrition resistance. There are differences in what we have seen with different suppliers products. Harder does not necessarily mean good things. Its been pretty good when it comes to regenerator losses, but it actually has done us some harm in ash increase in our slurries. So Id be careful with getting something thats harder than youre more accustomed to running. Use your unit to tell you whats a good operating area based on your expander vibrations that may result or your slurry ashes that may result. And work with that as your baseline, and use that with the information that the supplier has in their portfolio to specify a proper product for you. BAZIL BURGESS (Premcor, retired): For those of you who have hot gas expanders that have had a problem with buildup of catalyst on the shroud, you might want to look at changing catalyst if you cant solve the problem any other way. Back in the late 80s, we made several changes, one of them being catalyst. And all of a sudden, we started having that problem, where we did not have it before. So we had not gotten around to identifying that particularly, but thats something you might look at. JOSEPH W. WILSON (Barnes and Click, Inc.): Just a couple of other things you might look at when you start thinking about catalyst. There are catalyst properties, mostly physical properties, but some reactive properties you can change to deal with other problems in the unit. For example, if you have an increase to a catalyst with a higher particle density, it can have an affect on the amount of losses from your regenerator in your opacity. If you change to a catalyst with a lower total void fraction at minimum fluidization conditions, it can sometimes help overcome problems with an overloaded or an inefficient stripper, and reduce your regenerator temperatures and product loss that way, in hydrogen on coke. The activity change that C. J. mentioned in response to an improved riser termination device, this can also be used on units that are pushing their catalyst circulation limits in the slide

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valves and the stand pipes to get away from those limits by reducing the cat/oil ratio required to get the desired conversion that you need. Question 25. What are the sources of FCC catalyst metal contaminants such as potassium, iron, sodium, calcium, and zinc? What are the remedies for metal contamination? Are FCC feed desalters the answer?

FARLEY: These are not necessarily your typical contaminants. For contaminants like potassium, iron, sodium, calcium, and zinc, sources can vary. Most of the time, its feed related. In our experience weve seen zinc associated mainly with lube oil or motor oil; several locations are running used motor oil through their process units. I think everybody pretty well knows sodium is a bad actor as far as it actually physically destroys portions of the catalyst by attacking the acid sites. Potassium is very similar. Its not as severe as sodium, but its bad. Calcium acts in a similar fashion. Zinc also has a similar type of attack. The industry has done a lot of work in the last few years about iron. We've seen a lot of papers about the effects of iron contamination. The main problem is that it is hard to account for variations in feed contaminant loadings on a day to day basis. Generally, people only make changes upon seeing moves in the FCC equilibrium catalyst properties. This introduces a lot of lag time in the control of the unit. So the issue is how do you look at the FCC feed to make sure you don't get the contaminants in the unit to begin with. My personal experience has been that the bad problems I've had are related to specific sources of feed. For example, one crude well is undergoing some sort of cleaning operation and suddenly you have 20 ppm iron in your FCC feed sample. By the time you get the sample results, its been in your unit for quite a while. Having said that FCC feed is the usual source of metals, it may not be the problem in every instance. If you start to see metal spikes on your E-cat analysis, you start seeing high sodium or, high iron, you owe it to yourself to look at more than just the feed. You can't just assume that it's coming from the feedstock. There have been cases where sodium has come from the air system. I know of one case in particular where caustic was being unloaded with air pressure. And literally, caustic got in the air system, which got in the FCC through the air system, and that's a horrible, horrible thing to happen. But it happens, and you're never going to find that in the feedstock. In terms of rank order, we would think sodium, potassium, calcium, then zinc and iron is sort of the order of severity of these contaminants. COUSAR: Close monitoring of the desalter effluent water pH and management of refinery recycle streams are two means by which we control metals in our topped crude/cat feed. One theory about calcium and iron contamination is the use of the chelant Na4EDTA in the acid stimulation of oil well production. EDTA has a tendency to pick up iron and calcium while releasing sodium. Severe pH changes inside the desalters can cause the calcium and iron to be discharged back into the crude while the sodium is picked up again. Does anyone in the audience have any experience with FCC feed desalters as a means of metals removal from cat feed?

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KENNETH A. PECCATIELLO (Chevron Products Company): In addition to potassium from feedstocks, refiners that are using potassium hydroxide for HF alkylation neutralization and are feeding the acid soluble oil (ASO) back to the FCC unit can introduce additional potassium on the catalyst. FRANK ELVIN (Coastal Catalyst Technology, Inc.): If youre going to run resids, you should have a double desalter ahead of your resid to take out any sodium that may be coming in with the resid. Theres usually a lot of sodium in the resid coming from your crude unit where you have a desalter, and usually you add sodium for pH control. And double desalting is very effective at improving the FCC performance. The other things you can do to handle these metals and the main problem with metals is the nickel and vanadium, but all these other metals also are bad for the FCC yields. You can add extra fresh catalyst, you can purchase flash catalyst, you can purchase good equilibrium catalyst to flush out the metals, you can use the Kellogg magnetic separator to minimize the amount of fresh catalyst you need, and you can also use Coastals ACT process, which actually demetalizes the catalyst so that less fresh catalyst is required. Question 26. What is the panels experience with cyclone velocities greater than 75ft/sec? Does it correlate with cyclone life? What about catalyst carryover? What are the advantages of higher velocities? FARLEY: We see a very large number of units actually operating above 75 fps velocity. Normally, from a design standpoint, we dont plan on this. But in operation, 30% to 50% of the units that I know of are routinely doing this. And, does it correlate with cyclone life? Yes, it does. Our opinion is that it shortens cyclone life and if it shortens cyclone life, its a failure that takes place between turnarounds. Youre going to have some sort of failure faster operating with higher velocities than you do running lower velocities. In terms of catalyst carryover, increasing cyclone inlet velocity also increases the pressure drop across the cyclone, which means dipleg backup increases. At some point in time with continued increases in velocities, you can run out of dipleg. The second youre out of dipleg, the catalyst thats in the cyclone goes out the top, and you have carryover due to dipleg backup. In terms of advantages of higher velocities, directionally, theres some marginal improvement in cyclone efficiency. But the problem is, your cyclone loading goes up so quickly that you never really see that. The real advantage of higher velocities is you can do it on line. Youve got your unit, its been running two years, you come up with some new online optimization routine, and you can push more capacity to the unit with the same cyclones you have, and you choose to do that until your next turnaround. Thats the real advantage of higher velocities. I dont think that anybody really designs to run higher velocities, just as a matter of course. There have been cases where people choose to accept higher velocities due to space limitations, but these are not common cases. MARLOWE: Just to add to that, we talked about the high velocities before. We do have problems with higher velocities at our location. The Toledo Refinery does run 83 to 85 feet per second, and this is in the inlet to the second stage. This is where you want to try to maintain your 85 feet per second. 55

Now, the 75 feet per second is really a design point that the manufacturers try to maintain so that you can have a normal life of your cyclone. If youre planning on replacing the cyclone or repairing it, yes you could take advantage of some higher velocities, but you have to be very careful. What we were worried about was we were not monitoring it, and the operations capacities were pushing it to well above 85 feet per second. We ran 86, 87, 88, 89 feet per second. It doesnt sound like a lot, but the velocities are a factor of 3 or a factor of 4 related to erosion. So if you have a 13% increase in your velocity, then you probably have close to a 45% increase in your erosion. So you would wear out much, much, much, faster. So you can almost take that calculation factor of 3 and you can kind of take the days or whatever from an initial design of 15 or 20 years, and youll find out how many days you actually knock off of your life. So, a major cause of erosion is your velocity, so you really want to monitor your velocity. BILL HEUMANN (Fisher-Klosterman): Weve done a lot of work with velocities and cyclones. A lot of it is mirroring what the panel said. We find that a increased inlet velocity kind of correlates about to the cube of the increase in velocity. So 15% increase in inlet velocity might get you about 50% increase in erosion rate or a 33% decrease in equipment life. Of course, youve got two real times youre considering whether youre going in as an increasing flow to an existing unit thats just sitting there and its a throughput issue. The other is for a rebuild or repurchase or refitting a vessel with cyclones. And one major advantage that at least everybody needs to understand that drives part of the selection is higher inlet velocity ends up with cheaper cyclones. So, when youre making your capital costs comparisons and youre looking at a new system, if youre comparing a system that is 75 feet per second inlet velocity and another one at 65 feet per second inlet velocities, there is a cost disadvantage in the initial capital equipment, you know, with bigger equipment at higher inlet velocities. The other thing - when youve got existing cyclones, your increase in flow will increase inlet and outlet velocities, but the two are not necessarily coupled when youre working with a new design and the effects on erosion and decreased equipment life are a lot more clearly linked to inlet velocity. So if you have pressure drop, but you dont want to be using inlet velocity, outlet velocity is less detrimental, in our experience, to life. FARLEY: Thats a good comment from the floor. Weve seen something similar to that where one advantage of higher cyclone velocities was basically eliminating the need for vessel replacement. In this case, to the velocity range you would like, the head would have to come off, and you dont have enough diameter for the cyclone layout you need. You eventually reach some sort of ultimate capacity where youve got high superficial velocity. The next cyclone size is not available for you, because you cant get the cyclones in, theres just not enough physical space in the top head of that vessel. So what you end up looking at is vessel shell replacement and I have not seen too many people get excited about that, yet. WILLIAM D. HENNING (Conoco Inc.): Weve had one Cat Cracker where after about a year of operation, we wore down the refractory on the back end of the primary cyclone. And the inlet velocity there was about 85 feet per second, so it was moving along pretty good. And so we fixed it up pretty quickly. Then we developed a strategy for operating based on velocities, and we used erosion as proportional to 56

velocity to the 5th power, and that seemed to fit some previous data in the unit, and also it seemed to work pretty well until we got to the next turnaround and we could actually replace the cyclones. Question 27. What are the consequences of using oxygen enrichment? additional maintenance expenses? safety considerations? FARLEY: The background of O2 enrichment is that, you have a lot of FCCs out there that are out of air blower capacity. And theres still a lot of incremental margin to burn more coke. O2 enrichment offers one way to combust incremental coke when youre out of air blower. The issue is, its not free. You have to buy the oxygen to combust the coke. There is usually an economic debit where the regenerator temperature ends up going up some, so there may be a loss in cat to oil, depending on what the unit configuration is. Most people report some sort of incremental catalyst deactivation. These numbers go all over the map. Ive heard numbers at 10%, Ive heard numbers at 40%, so, its very site specific. Overall, if the regenerator temperature goes up, theres usually some sort of decline in the overall yield structure of the unit. So, what this gets down to is usually, theres a pretty robust economic evaluation, and hurdle pricing is set where the feed margin has to be over a certain value before you make the decision to use O2 enrichment. Once you make the decision to use O2 enrichment, its pretty important to have a very robust safety interlock system in place and it is very important to control the percentage of oxygen thats actually entering the regenerator. My direct experience is that most people limit O2 to about 25 mol % being charged to the regenerator. There are reports in industry of people going higher than that. And as mentioned, the safety interlock system is absolutely critical. CARPER: Theres another reason for using oxygen enrichment, you can decrease your superficial velocity if you run into cyclone loading challenges. Individual plant economics drive this decision. One of our refineries uses a dedicated crew to handle the equipment and connections. They are specifically trained and dedicated to the tasks. The keys are quite simple: keep it clean, keep it dry, and keep it oil free. The refinerys source of information for handling and addressing safety issues was from the Compressed Gas Association and Linde. Lastly one major key our refinery wanted to share: by all means, do not hot tap into an oxygen line. ROBERT BEST (Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.): In addition to the comments from the podium, I wanted to mention that oxygen enrichment will slightly increase the regenerator bed temperature. As a general rule of thumb for predicting the temperature rise, and of course, this is due to the loss of some of the nitrogen as heat sinks, is that you consider that for each 1% of oxygen enrichment, the bed temperature can increase by about 3o to 5o F, given no other changes in process variables. In addition to that, oxygen enrichment levels in our experience have ranged from 21% to 28%. And I would agree that on an average basis, we see about 24%, on average. Some brief comments related to safety. To our knowledge, the FCC oxygen enrichment has been safely practiced by our customers for well over two decades. We believe that around 57

the world, FCC O2 enrichment is used in between 40 to 50 FCC units. And a brief listing of safety considerations would include a properly designed O2 diffuser, proper placement of that diffuser, keeping in mind placing it at least ten pipe diameters from any impingement point, observing O2 material construction compatibility issues in piping guidelines. We, as a company, closely follow CGA pamphlet 4.0 and 4.1 guidelines for O2 material selection, pipeline construction, and cleaning practices. And just briefly, on the O2 flow skid and controls, this should include several key safety interlocks such as high oxygen flow, high oxygen pressure, high calculated O2 enrichment levels, high measured O2 enrichment, high temperature conditions in the air main downstream of the O2 injection, low air flow, regenerator temperature, and a general catch-all master FCC interlock, to name most of the common interlocks. Each of our applications, of course, would follow a formal haz-op review prior to commissioning. And in closing, Id just like to mention for more detailed information on FCC O2 enrichment safety and other FCC topics, I would recommend an interesting and new website put out by Refinery Process Services, and in part sponsored by Air Products. The address is www.thefccnetwork.com. JOSEPH W. WILSON (Barnes and Click, Inc.): Ive got a question this time. Just out of curiosity, if anybodys willing to name numbers, Im curious as to what levels of oxygen enrichment people are actually running on a regular basis. J. ROBERT RILEY III (Grace Davison): One of the side benefits that weve seen as a consequence of oxygen enrichment is that as the EPA and the other regulatory agencies are starting to crack down on SOx emissions, the catalyst additives for SOx control are generally much more efficient when used in a regenerator using oxygen enrichment. So, thats a little side benefit you can get. ROBERT BEST (Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.): I just want to mention that on average, about - the answer to the question about what level of enrichment? We see about 24% as a rough average, the range being from very little to probably a maximum of 28%. Self-imposed guidelines dictated by CGA and other companies, mainly for safety purposes, you have - above 28%, you try to treat the line as if its going to have to carry pure oxygen, and therefore needs the required cleanliness to do so. JASON PAGEL (Lyondell-Citgo Refining): Our typical O2 level is around 24.5%. UNKNOWN: At the one refinery where we use oxygen enrichment, we run 25% to 27%. T. DAVID PAY (Lyondell-Citgo Refining): David Pay, Lyondell-Citgo Refining. To add on to Jasons remarks, weve been doing oxygen enrichment since 1983. And initially, we started with a vaporizing system where the oxygen was brought in as a liquid, and then fed into the unit. Now, we have a pipeline connection and so it comes in as a vapor. The original system we had stainless steel piping throughout, but when we installed some new equipment back in 1992, we had to re-route the

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line, so we went with carbon steel lines for the additional piping that we had to put in. We did go through a very elaborate cleaning of the system before we commissioned it. Question 28. What kinds of filters or separators have satisfactorily removed catalyst from slurry? FARLEY: The table (Figure 28 see next page) compares some slurry filters or separators that have satisfactorily removed catalyst from slurry. The first column is Gulftronics, the second column is the Mott cartridge filter system, the third column is the Pall cartridge filter, and the last column is the hydrocyclone. Basically, just a quick survey of what's out there in industry, from what I can see, Gulftronics, first installed 1979, has a lot of installations, more than 50. Estimated slurry solid concentration is around 50 ppm. The Mott system, first installed 1990, currently has 9 installations, and generally estimated to be around 20 ppm slurry solids. Pall cartridge systems, first installation was 1989, 16 of those installations now, generally estimated to have anywhere from 20 to 50 ppm solids in the slurry product to storage, with 50 ppm on the high side. And the Dorr-Oliver hydrocyclone, 1960 for first installation, around 50 of those, generally more like 300 ppm solids in the final slurry product. The Gulftronics preferred backwash material is HCO, with Mott also generally listing HCO first, while Pall tends to name slurry as their first choice. The three systems do call out that any of the streams below can be satisfactory. Basically, Gulftronics directionally has the highest backwash rate. The Mott and Pall systems are fairly similar in terms of backwash rates. The filter systems have a wider operating temperature range than the Gulftronics. It is important to look at things like plot space and operating costs when making your decision as far as which type of system to invest in. There can be some pretty surprising differences in plot space. The final decision should be based more on life cycle cost analysis as opposed to investment cost only. COUSAR: Prior to our '99 FCC turnaround , we were losing quite a bit of catalyst from our reactor. We went through the process of evaluating both the Pall and the Mott filtration systems. The cost estimate for the filtration skid (including the filtration vessels, filter elements, piping, pumps, valves, etc.) that was sized for approximately 3,000 bpd of slurry was about $1.1 million. The total installed cost was estimated to be $2.2 million. We were justifying this expenditure based on approximately $0.9 million of savings. The savings were in the form of a reduction in the frequency of cleaning the slurry tanks, a reduction in the disposal costs of the catalyst sludge in the tanks, and the elimination of the slurry settling aid. The decision was made to revamp our FCC reactor and in doing so, we reduced our catalyst losses to the point to where the filter project was economically infeasible. MONIQUE STREFF (Fisher Rosemount Systems): I'm just wondering if that $.9 million in savings was just for a year or considered overall? COUSAR: That was our annualized savings. That was $900,000 per year.

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HAZLE: Any other questions or comments? Ive held you long enough. I appreciate you staying for the end of the session. Lets say thank you to our panelists. [applause].

Device First Installation Number of Installations Estimated Slurry Effluent Solids Concentration, ppm Percent of slurry feed that is recycled to riser from separator Backwash requirement as a percent of separator feedrate Choices for backwash fluid Operating temperature range (F)

Gulftronics Separator 1979 >50 50

Mott Cartridge Filter System 1990 9 <20

Pall Cartridge Filter System 1989 16 <50

Dorr-Oliver Hydrocyclone 1960 >50 ~ 300

~9

20

As low as 0.2 %, up to 2 % FCC Feed, LCO, HCO, Slurry 401 - 600 F (480 F normal)

Up to 2 %

FCC Feed, LCO, HCO, Slurry 302 -392 F (356 F normal)

FCC Feed, LCO, HCO, Slurry 480 F normal operation, 550 F maximum design temperature

NA

482 - 670 F

Figure 28

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2000 EXHIBITORS
ABB Fan Group North America 19065 Highway 174 Pell City, AL 35125 205-814-1722 Mr. Bruce J. Gallagher ABB Fan Group engineers and manufactures FD and ID fans for fired heaters, CCR blowers, highpressure fans for fluidization and sulfur recovery, and will engineer upgrades for allexisting fans. Aggreko Inc. 12000 Aerospace Ave., Suite 300 Houston, TX 77034 713-852-4500 Mr. Bob James World Wide provider of specialty utility services. Services include temporary electricity, oil-free air, cooling water, process cooling and more. Backed by a professional support team and engineering staff. All Tech Inspection 9009 North Loop East #155 Houston, TX 77029 713-673-2385 Mr. Leo Poirier Plant inspection services API 510, 570, 653. AltairStrickland, Inc. 5110 Railroad Avenue Deer Park, TX 77536 281-478-6200 Mr. Sherwood McDonald FCCU T/A Specialist; Field Erected Vessels, Tower & Tray Work, Field Piping. Atlantic Scaffolding Company 2817 West End Avenue, Suite 126 - Box 169 Nashville, TN 37203 615-851-5727 Mr. Wes Horton TURNKEY scaffolding contractor featuring Excel Modulor System, the "no tools -positive locking" system; Engineeral Scaffold, FCC "JIG Stands" reduces costs; Regional offices: Baltimore, Baton Rouge, Houston, Nashville, New Orleans, Mobile, Tampa. Bently Nevada Corporation 7651 Airport Blvd. Houston, TX 77061 713-640-1111 x4203 Mr. Glenn Poche Rotating machinery protection and management hardware/software and engineering services providing full solutions. Boardman, Inc. 1135 S. McKinley Oklahoma City, OK 73108 405-634-5434 x222 Mr. Roger Grommet FCCU Components, ASME Section VIII Div. 1 vessels trayed towers. Causeway Steel Products, Inc. 6923 Mayfair Houston, TX 77078 713-649-6923 Mr. Darrell McAnelly Causeway manufactures refractory anchoring, hexmetal, flexmetal, hexcels, s-anchors and punchtabs. Causeway also offers complete hexmetal and flexmetal, fabrication with insulation drawings, which will greatly reduce your insulation time. Champion Elevators, Inc. 8400 Villa Drive Houston, TX 77061 713-640-8500 Lee Brantley American manufacturer of rack-and-pinion elevator systems specifically engineered for the petrochemical and refinery environments. Temporary and permanent elevators available for new construction, retrofits and turn-arounds. Custom engineered for your specific project with explosion proof, corrosion resistant and variable frequency drives available. Compressor Controls Corporation 11359 Aurora Ave. Des Moines, IA 50322 281-583-7799 Mr. Jeff McWhirter Compressor Controls Corp. (CCC) is the world leader in design and manufacture of electronic control systems for all turbomachinery applications, including cat cracker air blowers and Power Recovery Trains.

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Construction & Turnaround Services 12343 East Skelly Drive Tulsa, OK 74128 918-437-4400 Mr. Gerald Schivally Mechanical and refractory field contractor for turnarounds and capitol projects. Continental Fabricators, Inc. 5601 West Park Avenue St. Louis, MO 63110 314-781-6300 Mr. Charles W. Vogler All FCCU Components including Reactor and Regenerator Heads, Internals, Risers, Wyes, Air Grids, Stripper Sections, Overhead Lines. Corhart Refractories 1600 West Lee Street Louisville, KY 40210 502-775-7388 C.W. Miller Corguard-Abrasion, impact, and corrosion resistant ceramic. Airgrid nozzles, cyclones (inlets, dust bowls, diplegs), 3rd stage separater tubes, transfer lines, coker elbows, riser linings, and critical flow nozzles. Deloro Stellite 471 Dundas Street East Belleville K8N 1A2, ON Canada 613-968-3481 x245 Ms. Elaine Foster Deloro Stellite is a provider of solutions for wear, corrosive and heat resistant problems. Deloro manufactures cobalt and nickel based alloys. Components are produced in eight processes, supported by a full machineshop. Delta Catalytic Industrial Services 2000 Argentia Road, Plaza 1, Suite 400 Mississauga, L5N 1P7, ON Canada 403-258-6700 Mr. Ken Beevers Industrial contract maintenance, turnarounds & shutdowns management and execution, revamp, construction and construction management, plant commissioning and start-up, maintenance management technology/CASP (Computer Assisted Scheduling & Planning System), turnaround management training.

Diamond Refractory Services, Inc. 8431 Mosley Houston, TX 77075 713-378-9200 Mr. Chris Lanclos FCCU T/A Specialists, Vibration Casting, Wet Gunning, D-Bar Anchor, Project Management and Corporate Alliances. Dynamic-Ceramic Limited Crewe Hall, Weston Road, Crewe Cheshire, CN1 6UA England 011441270501000 Mr. Richard Binks Advanced ceramic materials and components for wear, erosion, and corrossion resistance. ENPRO SYSTEMS, INC. 16315 Market Street Channelview, TX 77530 281-452-5865 Mr. Rick Crago FCCU Slide & High Performance Butterfly Valves, Diverter Valves, Reactor/Regenerator Vessels, Overhead Transfer Lines, Risers/Standpipes, Air Distributors, Injection Nozzles, and ASME Code Pressure Vessels. Everlasting Valve Company 108 Somogyi Court South Plainfield, NJ 07080 908-769-0700 Mr. Frank Hawley The Rotating Disc Valves renew their sealing surfaces with each cycle. FCCU licensors include these valves in their specifications. Dry abrasive media or slurries; vacuum to class 2500 temperatures to 1500 F. Expansion Joint Systems, Inc. 10035 Prospect Ave., Suite 202 Santee, CA 92071 619-562-6083 Ms. Kathy Tyson Manufacturer of metal and fabric expansion joints and piping solutions for various applications including FCCU, Spent Catalyst, Regenerator Standpipe Joints, Fluegas, Clam Shell Joints and on-site services. EJMA Member.

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Fibercon International, Inc. 100 South Third Street Evans City, PA 16033 724-538-5006 Mr. Keith Foley Steel reinforcing fibers (slit sheet, melt extract, drawn wire), anchors, studs and stud welding equipment for the refractory industry. Fisher-Klosterman, Inc. 822 S. 15th St. Louisville, KY 40210 502-572-4000 Mr. Gary Kissel Cyclones, Diplegs, and Trickle Valves for fluid bed systems. Air pollution control equipment, services and replacement parts. Grace Davison 7500 Grace Drive, Bldg. 25, 2nd Floor Columbia, MD 21044 410-531-8226 Ms. Elizabeth W. Mettee Worlds leading supplier of Fluid Cracking Catalysts & FCC Additives. Hi-Tech Refractory/Geo. P. Reintjes 3800 Summit Kansas City, MO 64111-2999 816-756-2150 Mr. Tim Coppinger Hi-Tech and the Geo. P. Reintjes Co. are full service refractory installation contractors specializing in FCCU turnarounds. Offices are located throughout the USA and Canada. InduMar Products, Inc. 2500 Tanglewilde, Suite 260 Houston, TX 77063 713-977-4100 Mr. Bart Davis InduMar Products, Inc. will be demonstrating the STOP IT PIPE REPAIR system.

J.T. Thorpe & Son, Inc. 14540 Alondra Blvd. La Mirada, CA 90638 714-670-9500 Mr. Craig Jackson Refractory Engineering & Contracting. Kellogg Brown & Root, Inc. 601 Jefferson Avenue Houston, TX 77002-7990 281-492-5880 Mr. Terry L. Goolsby Provide refiners with information about FCC products offered by Kellogg Brown & Root and how it will help them. Koch Specialty Plant Services, Inc. 12221 E. Sam Houston Pkwy. N Houston, TX 77044 713-427-7715 Ms. Veronica Brown KSPS specializes in tower internal installation, revamp, maintenance and repair services, which include modification and repair of fired equipment, reactor catalyst changeouts, on-site hydraulic bolting, field machining and bundle extraction. Lamons Gasket Company 7300 Airport Blvd. Houston, TX 77061 713-222-0284 Ms. Debbie D. Warren Manufacturer of spiralwound gaskets, heat exchanger gaskets, ring joint gaskets, all nonmetallic fluid sealing products and bolts, and specialty fasteners. Lubrication Systems Company 1740 Stebbins Drive Houston, TX 77043 713-464-6266 Mr. Bob Harrington Manufacturer of: Most advanced oil mist generator available, oil purification systems, API 614 lube oil systems, and pre-engineered lube oil systems. Marsulex Environmental Technologies 200 N. 7th Street Lebanon, PA 17046 717-272-7212 Mr. Ed Tenney FCC cylcones and electrostatic precipitators, wet flue gas desulfurization scrubbers.

Industrial Gunite, Inc. 2000 Magnolia Street Pasadena, TX 77503 713-477-0331 Mr. Robert M. Ferguson Contractor specializing in refractory, fireproof, and acid proof construction and turnarounds.

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Mogas Industries, Inc. 14330 E. Hardy Street Houston, TX 77039 281-449-0291 Ms. Lori Evans Since 1973, Mogas has engineered metal seated ball valve solutions that overcome high temperature and high pressure, media build-up, cycling with solids in the line and erosive attack of materials and coatings. Murphy Industrial Constructors 626 East Pine Place Griffith, IN 46319 219-923-0425 Terry Swanson FCCU Turnaround Services. Nooter Construction Company 1400 South Third Street St. Louis, MO 63104 800-325-7369 x565 Mr. Raymond J. Montrey FCCU T/A Maintenance and Repair. Philip Services Corp. 5200 Cedar Crest Blvd. Houston, TX 77087 713-495-3521 Mr. Mike Prevost Project management, refractory, catalyst handling, piping and specialty welding. Tower, vessel and exchanger specialist. REMOSA S.p.A. 17 South Briar Hollow, Suite 207 Houston, TX 77027 713-355-4900 Mr. William W. Cathriner Slide, Butterfly, Diverter Valves.

RHI Refractories America 600 Grant St. Pittsburgh, PA 15219 573-473-3517 Mr. Mark Schnake Manufacturer of refractory products previously produced by N. American, Harbison-Walker, and A.P. Green Refractory companies. Ribbon Technology Corp. 825 Taylor Station Road Gahanna, OH 43230 614-864-5444 Mr. John Norder Ribbon Technology manufactures stainless steel for castable refractory reinforcement. Senior Flexonics - Pathway Division 2400 Longhorn Industrial Dr. New Braunfels, TX 78130 830-629-8080 Mr. Dave McGrath Senior Flexonics Pathway is recognized as the industry leader in the innovation, design and manufacture of high-quality metal and fabric expansion joints. Sermatech Technical Services 12505 Reed Rd. Sugar Land, TX 77478 713-948-1534 Mr. John J Saphier Engineered coatings for steam turbines and axial flow compressors. Shared Systems Technology, Inc. 127 Salem Avenue Thorofare, NJ 08086 856-853-5700 Mr. Frank DeMartino Refractory Installer.

Resco Products, Inc. 705 Sarah Ann Nacogdoches, TX 75961 936-560-3335 Mr. Robert M. Huegele Resco Products Inc. manufacturers a complete line of high quality refractories for the refining industry.

Stress Engineering Services Inc. 13800 Westfair East Drive Houston, TX 77041 281-955-2900 Mr. Terry Lechinger SES is a consulting engineering company with disciplines in civil, mechanical, electrical, mechanical and chemical disciplines. Offices in 5 US cities with expertise in fitness for service, remaining life and high temperature applications.

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TAPCO International 5915 Brittmoore Houston, TX 77041 713-466-0300 Mr. Mark S. Taylor FCC Slide Valves, Butterfly Valves, Diverter Valves and FCC Equipment. Team Industrial Services, Inc. 200 Hermann Drive Alvin, TX 77511 281-388-5545 Mr. W. R. McAfee Team provides high temperature, high pressure leak repairs and hot tap services on cat cracker walls and flue gas ducts (1350 F), plus thermowell and sparger installations (1300 F). The TIMEC Group of Companies 155 Corporate Place Vallejo, CA 94590-6968 707-642-2222 x239 Mr. Rich Milland Industrial turnaround, maintenance, repair and modification services, including project management, planning and safety. Subsidiaries specialize in tower, vessel, heater repairs; welding; electrical/instrumentation; exchanger, bolting and catalyst services.

VALVTRON 6830 N. Eldridge #502 Houston, TX 77488 713-466-7200 x4 Ms. Ronda Kalinec-Espinoza VALVTRONS metal seated ball valves are a proven solution for tough FCCU applications such as slurry pump isolation. Many of our valves have been in service over 10 years without repairs. We can provide customer contacts who will testify to our longevity in this and other service FCCU applications. Vesuvius Premier 9135 Wallisville Road, Suite A Houston, TX 77029 713-675-4167 Mr. Steve Kirklin Vesuvius offers a full like of refractory products and services for the construction and maintenance of hydrocarbon processing facilities. Vesuvius offers a full line of monolithics, brick and ceramic fiber. Zimmermann & Jansen, Inc. 620 N. Houston Ave. Humble, TX 77338 281-446-8000 Mr. Bredo Christensen Manufacturer of High Temperature Slide, Butterfly, Double Disc, Gate, Wedge-within-wedge Valves.

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