- Various Companies
Before a hurricane strikes, we want to be prepared. That means knowing your delayed coker is protected, your staff will be safe and sheltered, and your return to production will be quick.
RefComm® Galveston begins with a panel of your refinery industry peers exploring each of those areas. They’ll share experiences of what worked and didn’t work at the refinery, which will help us all to be better prepared. After this general panel, the Coking Hall has set aside their own time to delve deeper into issues that affect the coker. You’ll hear stories about recovering from power failure, line plugging, and coke combustion. You’ll learn how a coker recovered from a tarry drum and other issues caused by wind and high water. Their Lessons Learned will be the springboard for you and others to share what was effective for them, or where they need to improve. The take-aways will be to pick up lessons learned, get ideas for improving your own action plan and how to be even better prepared for the next hurricane and avoid incidents.
Since its inception twenty years ago, Coking.com and Refining Community’s goal has been for all of us to benefit from the combined knowledge and contributions of our coker community. This is another excellent opportunity for you to share and learn with your industry peers.
A valuable part of each panel at RefComm® is the Q&A session. Questions are taken from the audience as well as submitted through a live interactive app (SLIDO). Because of the high volume of questions submitted, there was not enough time to discuss every point during the live event so we have posted some additional information below.
Question: Does the refinery have multiple power source options? Or single source? Internal or external power generation?
Answer: Most refineries have gone away from internal power generation to sustain full operation, because it takes a very large cogeneration plant to provide enough power to maintain full utilities. (air, steam, water). Refineries are also typically dependent on external utilities, so even if a site had full back-up power it is still very likely that the external sites would not maintain service.
Question: Were there a lot of pumps submerged in water? If so, how did you deem them safe for restarting after motor was under water?
Answer: Equipment check for rotation, new lubrication, and Megger test
Why is Megger Testing Done?
Insulation resistance quality of an electrical system degrades with time, environment condition i.e. temperature, humidity, moisture and dust particles. It also get impacted negatively due to the presence of electrical and mechanical stress, so it’s become very necessary to check the IR (Insulation resistance) of equipment at a constant regular interval to avoid any measure fatal or electrical shock.
Questions: Did you make changes to your pump elevations as a result of past or the potential of future events?
Answer: I have never seen this done but sandbags to protect equipment was part of our (HOVENSA) Hurricane preparation.