Our chemical cleaning practices for Crude/Vacuum and Coking units have evolved over many years. The starting point in most cases, after feed is out and the unit has circulated down, cooled and pumped out, is a flush with diesel or LCO followed by a good steamout.
The appropriate required testing of emergency shutdown valves is included in each Marathon refinery’s Mechanical Integrity (MI) program, complying with OSHA’s Process Safety Management regulation and EPA’s Risk Management Plan regulation.
Monitoring drum wall conditions during the drum cycle is best performed using strain gauges. Each strain gauge location will typically be fitted with gauges in both the axial and hoop directions and have an associated skin thermocouple.
The primary areas of concern include: •Coker feed circuit above 450 °F •Bottom section of the fractionator, including internals •Heater charge pumps and associated piping •Heater tubes.
GRUBB (Chevron USA, Inc.) Chevron has had some experience with flange fires in the past, so I’ve consulted with Dave Reeves, our corporate expert and also our Best Practice that we’ve developed for this. I know that I said temporary fixes up on the slide, but it’s not really a temporary fix.
METKA (Sunoco, Inc.) In March 2006, in our continuing effort to support safe, reliable, and environmentally sound operation, we announced our plans to apply for a permit to independently initiate an alkylation process improvement project in our Philadelphia HF alkylation unit.