New ExxonMobil Anti-Vibration Technologies Provide Significant Cost Savings and Improved Reliability

摘要

The industry-wide trend to increase capacity of existing equipment, sometimes referred to as capacity creep or debottlenecking, results in higher flow rates through the equipment in refining process units. In those units, the new operating point of the heat exchangers often results in a flow rate that could cause flow-induced vibration failures if the existing exchangers are used. Therefore, this debottlenecking requires larger, more expensive, newly designed heat exchangers. ExxonMobil has developed and patented a suite of technologies that can be retrofit into existing exchanger systems to mitigate vibration and avoid the need to purchase larger exchangers or other more costly solutions. In grassroots applications, these technologies can be used to reduce the size of exchangers, or to reduce pressure drop in gas compression circuits. These technologies are widely implemented within ExxonMobil and are available for license through a limited number of qualified vendors worldwide. This paper describes the new suite of vibration mitigation technologies in general, and presents a detailed commercial example that demonstrates how ExxonMobil has been able to increase unit capacity of a treat gas heater by 30% while using the existing exchanger train.