CatCracking Community

By Jeanne Rameau

The old days -
How many of you have worked in Refineries? Let me step back a moment and ask, how many of you have worked in refineries 30 years ago? What has changed? Hmmm, 30 years ago some Refineries did not require Coveralls to work in the field, people smoked in the field, personal radios were few and far between, and most of your automated controls were you…yes, you physically moving a valve out in a unit.

Fast Forward
What’s a TWIC card? TWIC stands for Transportation Worker Identification Credential. http://twicinformation.tsa.dhs.gov. TWIC was created out of the US PATRIOT ACT OF 2001 - http://freight.transportation.org/doc/water/twic.pdf. Currently, US Refiners are requiring employees and contractors working in secure areas to have TWIC cards. I would like to point out that I have my TWIC card, so I am not only eligible to work in Refineries, I could possibly check your bags at the airport as well.
I just want to get my work done -
This is a phrase mentioned by just about all who enter through the gates of a Refinery. Whether it’s a contractor, Operator, Engineer or Maintenance type. There are Hazops, PTA JSA, LOPA, PHA, if you look at current Safety programs, every acronym known to mankind exists and they all have a different twist to them. Control of work systems has far reaching tentacles. Currently, it’s very frustrating for folks to execute work. They want to be safe. But they want to get their work done. How do you accomplish both.

Hazards and Risks
Our Industry will always have hazards. There is no getting around it. You can design a state of the art system, throw lots of money at it, lots of people. But hazards will always exist. Simply put, Hazard is the potential to cause injury or damage. Risk on the other hand, is the likelihood that the Hazard will cause an incident. Hazards are caused by the following:
• Human Error
• Design
• Mechanical/Power failure
• Environmental conditions (such as weather)
• External Influences
Where risk comes in - is how do I as human determine how to weigh a risk and minimize it as much as possible. What might seem risky to you may not be much of a risk to me. If you are a new engineer or operator and have never performed a particular task, it might be very very risky. But an experienced senior engineer or operator might see very little risk or find it quite manageable. Some risks are very black and white; some are very grey and subjective.

Let’s look at an example:
I am using this case as an example because I have in the past worked a job similar to this situation. A Contract field engineer was discussing with me a project he was working on in a refinery and was very frustrated with the situation. It involved a natural gas TIE-IN in a Sulfur Plant. (This could just as well have been the Cat or Coker or other unit.) He felt the TIE-IN could be executed with the unit running and following a Job/Safety protocol. The Unit Engineer was new and didn’t have much experience. The Operators involved were also new. The Operator’s rep for the project felt comfortable with it, but needed the buy in of the Unit Engineer, Operators and Safety, as it was their unit and they would have to be involved in the TIE-IN work. The Unit Engineer felt to make the TIE IN, the Unit would have to be shut down (well that wasn’t going to happen outside a TAR). The newer operators were just following the lead of the new Engineer leaving the project in a stalemate. So who is right? Both parties.
What I am getting at is this particular TIE-IN could be done with the unit running or shutdown. Yes, if you shut the unit down…no problem (although the process of shutting down and starting up units has its own safety risks) but it could also be done safely while the unit is running. This is where experience and thoroughly researching all aspects of the job can benefit the unit and the Refinery.
Safety is a very fluid concept. What will work in one situation, might not work in another. We cannot simply write a Safety protocol and ASSUME it will fit in every situation.

OK, HERE’S ANOTHER EXAMPLE:
Civil work was being done with a road being dug up to put in a fire water line. Ecology blocks with cables connecting them between each of them, were placed around the excavation area so no one would fall in, with a hole watch to monitor contractors working in the ditch. The safety person was adamant that the hole watch should be wearing a harness and fall arrest so he would not fall to the bottom of the ditch. What the safety person did not understand was because of the depth of the ditch, the hole watch would end up at the bottom of the ditch anyway, as the fall arrest would do no good at such a shallow depth.
The hole watch could have simply staged himself outside the ecology blocks while still maintaining communication and visual site of personnel in the ditch. Meanwhile because of where the Safety Rep wanted the ecology blocks placed, a truck driver clipped one of the ecology blocks with the fender of his truck.

POINTS TO KEEP IN MIND
• Use common sense
• Look at each situation individually
• Think it through

Jeanne@SulfurUnit.com

Roasted rat meat when it chews through a powerline. Not a pretty site. That’s what shutdown the FCCU at Citgo Corpus Christi last week.

That’s not the first case of animals in the refinery.

I’ve watched deer walk into the BP Cherry Point Refinery. I’ve seen photos of grizzly bears climbing the ladder cages on various units and storage tanks.

Insects can cause problems too. In 1947, Grace Murray Hopper was working on the Harvard University Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator (a primitive computer). When the machine was experiencing problems, an investigation showed that there was a moth trapped between the points of Relay #70, in Panel F.

The operators removed the moth and affixed it to the log. (See the picture above.) The entry reads: “First actual case of bug being found.”

The word went out that they had “debugged” the machine and the term “debugging a computer program” was born.

So what’s the lesson learned? Be prepared by having procedures in place for the unexpected.

-Paul Orlowski
Co-founder and Community Builder
CatCracking.com

By Ken Peccatiello

Amid the doom and gloom in our current refining economics, the sun rises on a new day. (Unless of course you’re in the Midwest experiencing sub-zero weather or being surprised in Atlanta, Georgia with ice and snow http://www.weather.com/multimedia/videoplayer.html?clip=16227 or turning up the heat if you live in the northeast the northwest too for that matter. Did I leave anyone out? )

Deustshce Bank hosted an energy conference in Boston on January 7. The conference was very well attended by 96% of the refineries as everyone jockeys for information so they know how to position themselves in 2010. Lots of sad faces though, very depressed as the bleak outlook was proclaimed. No one’s making any money, everyone wants to sell. The buyers aren’t offering very much. So where’s that bright spot?

The oil industry and the federal government, recently at odds on many policies, may be walking down the aisle together. European refiner Petroplus’s CEO offered that there’s a likelihood of Washington imposing tariffs on U.S. oil imports. This would be bullish for U.S. refiners. Anyone have the inside scoop?

http://blogs.barrons.com/stockstowatchtoday/2010/01/08/deutsche-most-depressing-oil-conference-ever/?blog_id=53&post_id=8791

Ken@CatCracking.com

 By Ken Peccatiello

I was asked about the advantages and disadvantages for rerunning slurry to FCCU as feed.  They realized that slurry would likely not crack due to high aromatic content, but wondered if increased coke might be a concern?

 The biggest negatives from recycling slurry to the reactor are increased coke, which is reduced air availability from the main air blower (MAB; this also translates into higher regenerator temperatures, which decreases conversion) and increased dry gas, which translates into reduced wet-gas compressor (WGC) availability, (which can reduce unit conversion or throughput if the unit is WGC; limited).
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The expected yield structure is dependent upon the gravity of the slurry.  The more negative the gravity, the more coke and dry gas and the less valuable liquid products (C3 thru LCCO) are produced. Recycling slurry that has a fairly high positive gravity (over +4 API) can be cracked with a lesser impact on coke and dry gas and a good impact on liquid yields (C3 thru LCCO).

The only real reason to recycle slurry with less than a -2 API would be to heat the regen during full burn operations, when the regen temp is too cool/cold to support complete / full combustion of CO to CO2.  There is not enough hydrogen left in the slurry to generate valuable liquid yields at this gravity.�
In a partial burn, there is absolutely no incentive to recycle slurry that is less than -2 API.  It will just “chew-up” the already limited air (oxygen).
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An FCC would be much better off to reduce slurry yield through catalytic means. This could be accomplished by incorporating more active matrix into the catalyst particle, or through the use of separate particle additives.  Again however, at less than -2 API it would not be economically justifiable to utilize a separate particle additive; there is just not enough hydrogen remaining to be upgraded into lighter liquid products to justify the cost of the additional bottoms cracking additive. 

There could be some incentive to review, and employ, a modification to the catalyst formulation to incorporate a slight increase in the bottoms cracking component(s).  This would follow an evaluation by the catalyst supplier and the unit process engineer.

The slurry yield could also be reduced through process changes such as increased catalyst to oil or increased reactor temperatures.  However, both of the actions also have consequences on yields, selectivities and other process considerations.

With lower slurry yield, there is also the impact on the rundown rate, which translates into velocity issues.  We would want to ensure that we do not have a negative impact of slurry rundown velocity in either the process lines or in the exchangers.  The target for this velocity is 5 ft/s, (the range is from a low of 3 ft/sec to a high of 8 ft/s).
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Finally, considering that your FCCU now employs/utilizes high technology feed injectors, we should be cognizant of the impact the catalyst /coke contained within the slurry has on the erosion of the feed injectors and hence injector performance and the physical condition of the injectors.  Erosion of the internals would lead to lower/poorer performance of the injectors and thus lower conversion and a change in the product selectivities.

Where I live between Seattle and Vancouver, not many vegetables grow in November. We planted some red organic carrots late in August and I went out this November 14th weekend curious to see how they were doing. I was surprised to find a few of them as big as my thumb and pretty tasty.

So how is this about Safety?

I got my safety training at the ARCO and then BP Cherry Point oil refinery. The Safety Program was built around asking WYE - What’s Your Exposure. I’m going to congratulate Curt Brisky for his big success in starting it. That WYE question became so ingrained in us that we automatically asked it whenever we were prepping for a job.

If doesn’t matter if you are at the control board or out there changing the catalyst. You can always ask WYE.

Why are you doing this or that, WYE? What’s Your Exposure! I know that is one of the reasons Cherry Point Refinery is consistently in the Solomon top quartile and very low on the OSHA safety ratings.

They even gave us Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)–safety glasses, ear plugs and gloves–to take home. Why not be safe 24 hours a day.

When I ran out to the garden the other day, I didn’t bring my safety glasses or leather gloves. After all, I was just checking the carrots. But while I was there I noticed several branches the wind had blown down and spied some new roses. I picked up the tangle of branches, and did not get poked in the face or eye. Then I pruned several roses to bring inside. Not so lucky on the thorns, I have the scratches to prove it.

Why didn’t I grab the gloves and glasses on the way out, just in case. Was it for convenience? I exited out from the deck and would have to have gone all-the-way-around-to-the-garage to get my PPE. Or was it invincibility (or stupidity) theory? “I’ll be alright just this once.”

At the refinery they give you a lot of grief for not wearing your PPE and rightly so.

But no one’s going to make me wear PPE at home, just like no one’s going to make me plant vegetables or flowers. My quality of life, my hobbies, and yes my simple safety choices are up to me.

WYE?

Why not be safe?

-Paul Orlowski

The US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) asked Silver Eagle Refinery in Utah to stand down from operations until the “integrity and fitness” of company equipment can be verified and documented.

John Bresland, the chairman of OSHA said,

“Over the past several days, the CSB team has developed a number of serious concerns about the integrity of the piping and equipment at various locations in the plant. These concerns include a lack of required documentation and a lack of needed calculations of the fitness for service of various pieces of equipment.”

CSB was started in 1998–this is the first time they have asked a company to shut down operations.

Utah’s OSHA director Louis Silva agreed with the temporary shutdown.

Refinery officials said they had already begun the suspension of certain processing units before the CSB request and will suspend other refining processing units in an orderly and safe fashion.

“We have decided to do this because our top priority is the health and safety of our employees and the community,”

Silver Eagle Refining President Dave McSwain said.

“We believe this is the best decision given the circumstances. We are committed to being a responsible business in the community and being a contributor to an important industry sector,” he said. “We take our operating responsibility very seriously.”

According to the CSB preliminary report, the November 4th explosion occurred when a 10-inch pipe failed catastrophically, spewing hydrogen onto a nearby heater. The mid-morning explosion forced four families to leave damaged homes. The families were temporarily being housed with Silver Eagle support.

Local news video
November 16, 2009
-Paul Orlowski

I’ve dealt with this CatCracker issue a few times so I thought it would be helpful to share my response.

-Ken Peccatiello,  Ken@CatCracking.com

Issue: When should we consider the use of Antimony for Nickel passivation?

Background: Please see comment below from latest service report. The antimony chemical remains off. The E-cat nickel level has stabilized and even come down some (955 ppm on 8/19/09 vs. 858 ppm on 8/28/09). The E-cat vanadium level has also come down a little (1534 ppm on 8/19/09 vs. 1488 ppm on 8/28/09).

Question:  Do you have a guideline on a H2/CH4 ratio or ECAT metals level in which you think we should absolutely put the antimony back in?

Response

Background information:

1) Freshly deposited Ni is the most active. Ni will deactivate on its own over time as it becomes “encapsulated” within the catalyst as the catalyst ages, and as additional Ni deposits on top of the original Ni, reducing the surface area available for generating H2. In addition, we would use some judgment as to how fast the metals are being deposited. The faster it deposits, the more active it will be.

2) Catalyst type would be important. Specifically, how much Matrix Surface Area (MSA) is available (>50m2/gm)? The Ni will mostly deposit onto the Matrix. Therefore, if there is a lot of MSA the Ni will spread more effectively/efficiently and be more active/efficient at generating H2 than if an equivalent amount of Ni were deposited onto a catalyst with a low amount of MSA (<45m2/gm).

3) There are other H2 generating elements besides Ni; (V, Fe, Cu, Co all contribute to H2 generation) but at different rates generally referred to as Ni equivalent: (Ni) + (0.25*V) + (0.1*Fe) + (Cu) + (2*Co). Sb appears to work only on passivating Ni. There are other methods or mechanisms that will work on passivating V. Nothing works on passivating Fe, Cu or Co.

4) There is a specific target Sb/Ni ratio for employing Sb technology; 0.35 for catalysts that do not utilize Ni trapping technology, and 0.25 for catalysts that do utilize Ni trapping technology.

5) There are situations where the “deactivated” Ni can become “reactivated”. This generally is following the introduction(s) of a Halogen(s). Specifically, these would be Cl, F. Cl can be found in the Crude unit “rag-layer” which finds its way into the gas oil feed or as salt water found in purchased gas oils. F can be found when processing ASO (Acid Soluble Oil) from an HF Alky.

6) High levels of Sb usage has been observed to increase fouling/coking tendencies within the Main Fractionator Bottoms (MFB) circuit. Therefore, it is extremely important not to overfeed Sb additives and to monitor Sb concentrations in MFB liquid stream.

7) At multiple FCCU sites, Sb usage has been observed to dramatically increase NOX emissions. The increase in emissions will return to base levels within days of removing Sb additive.

Specific Questions

1) H2/CH4 ratio and Sb Usage: The typical “rule-of-thumb” value is 0.8 H2/CH4. However, that value tends to be fairly conservative. Most historical users (please read as old-timers) of Sb technology choose 0.85 as a trigger point. Again, we would target a ratio of 0.25 Sb/Ni ratio for catalysts employing Ni trapping technology; or a 0.35 Sb/Ni ratio for catalysts not employing a Ni trapping technology.

2) Given the impact Sb has on MFB fouling/coking, the refiner should try to minimize the use of Sb technology unless the H2/CH4 ratio is consistently over 0.85 and the Wet-Gas Compressor (WGC) is limiting the unit throughput or conversion. Just having the H2/CH4 ratio over 0.85 is not enough to trigger the use of Sb. The elevated H2 production has to be impacting the unit’s ability to generate a profit.

3) Generally, I would not even consider employing Sb under 1500 ppm Ni. At levels under 2500 ppm, I would strongly recommend that a refiner employ Ni trapping technology incorporated within their catalyst (directly from their catalyst manufacturer).

CatCracking.com was established to build that FCC Community.

Here’s our  story…There was an on-going uneasiness among the coker workers of the world about the risk of operating their unit.  Because of that, Coking.com was established in October 1998.  One month later, 6 people were killed at the Anacortes Refinery.  Suddenly our mission  became critical: Create a Coker Community for operators, mechanical and reliability technicians, maintenance and process engineers, supervisors, EPC’s and vendors to learn from each others’ expertise and improve productivity.  The goal:
“Together we can improve safety and reliability.”   

Read the posts about the Coking.com seminars, exhibition, training, discussion groups, forum, suppliers, contacts and more to learn about the huge success of this community.

The discussion forum, products & services suppliers, research and links are at www.CatCracking.com.  A conference, exhibition and training class starts on April 12, 2010 in Houston.  Working together as a CatCracking Community, we can minimize the unit risks, maintain reliability and increase productivity! 

With current re-organizations, the resources that had once been available and plentiful to the technical and operational folks are more limited.  This CatCracking Community can help fill the void.

Paul Orlowski
Gary Pitman
Ken Peccatiello