Dr. Amarvir Chilka - Furnace Improvement Services Inc.
Coker heaters are one of the most important heaters in any refinery. They have coke depositing on the tubes as they operate and as a result of the coke deposition the heater has to shut down for cleaning. Any spalling or pigging of tubes to remove coke causes downtime and production loss. The difference between a good coker heater and an average coker heater is the run length. Good coker heaters can have almost three times the run lengths of the average coker heaters. Owners are trying to upgrade the coil metallurgy to extend the run length. Furnace Improvement Services has worked on several coker heaters in the past 20 years and would like to share their findings on improving coker heater performances. There are a few critical parameters that determine the run length of the coker heater. We will examine the same in this presentation. We will talk about the new design of coker heaters with ultra-low NOx burners. These new burners have very long flames and they alter the heat distribution characteristics in the radiant box. We will present CFD modeling of the fireboxes to show the heat distribution and flame patterns. We have also developed a design of a new bridge wall geometry (patent pending) that is especially suitable for ultra-low NOx burners.