PERFORMANCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL MONITOR FOR TOTAL SULFUR AND HIGH HEATING VALUE OF REFINERY FLARE VENT GAS SYSTEMS

摘要

New environmental air regulations in California have required oil refineries to develop analytical systems to analyze the composition of flare vent gas streams for total sulfur and High Heating Value (HHV). Since a refinery can have multiple chemical processing units that are connected to a flare; the composition of its hydrocarbon stream can vary widely, depending on the units discharging to the flare. The sulfur concentration of the flare vent gas can vary from 1 - 150000 PPM and BTU values from 0 to 3000 BTU/FT3. This paper will discuss the method to extract and sample the process stream with minimal loss or adsorption of the analyte and provide the analytical figures of merit for the on-line total sulfur and HHV analysis. This data is representative of the first year of operation including SCAQMD certification data and daily performance data for five flare analytical systems.