The coker furnace is a key piece of delayed coker technology. The furnace is designed to delay the coking reactions by reducing the residence time inside the equipment. The objective is to heat the feed to the reaction temperature as fast as possible and then expand the heated stream into the coker drum and give it enough residence time inside the drum.
Despite being designed to minimize the coking reactions, some still occurs and the coke is being deposited inside the tube walls. With time, this growing coke layer increases the pressure drop inside the furnace and it also increases the isolation between the tube walls and the fluid inside them. For this reason, the tube fouling can cause the complete delayed coker unit to be shut down, due to either an excessive pressure drop on the tubes or an unsafe tube metal temperature due to the presence of the coke layer acting as insulation.
Join our webinar to better understand the effect of the different operating conditions. We’ll demonstrate how Petro-SIM® and its coker furnace technology can be used to accomplish the following studies:
By conducting these case studies, the operation time of the coker furnace can be extended and therefore, the operation time of the entire unit.