According to Richard Grove, FCC process expert for Chevron, a common concern among FCC professionals is how they can best promote safety when pausing their units during startups, shutdowns and standby operations.
In response, Grove helped AFPM conduct a benchmarking survey for the U.S. Chemical Safety Board.
"We sent a questionnaire out to 100 refineries," Grove said. "We received responses from 75 percent of the FCCs in the U.S."
The results have been instrumental in helping industry operate more safely and efficiently, joining the myriad tools and resources AFPM offers its industry members.
"We wanted to understand how people keep air and hydrocarbons separate in a cat cracker, so we put together this survey of a subgroup of only subject matter experts," said Ziad Jawad, senior FCC engineer for Phillips 66, expanding on the AFPM survey. "It was basically asking the same question, but in six different ways: 'How do you keep air and hydrocarbons separate, or how do you keep hydrocarbon and air separate?' We asked about that during three different scenarios, during startup, shutdown and standby."
Jawad noted that those who are familiar with FCC know that during regular operations when everything is operating within the normal range, instrumentation works, pressure drops work, and it's easier to keep air and hydrocarbons separate.
"But once you get into one of these modes like startup, shutdown or standby, the pressure balance is different," Jawad continued. "It is not the way the unit was designed to be, and you start to struggle a little bit."
The survey then asked: "During those modes, what preventive measures do you have in place, how do you monitor those measures and, finally, what actions do you take when you're outside of the acceptable range and in the danger zone?"
"We sent that out to over 100 cat crackers in the U.S., and we received a response from over 75 percent of the cat crackers," Jawad reiterated. The goal, he said, was not to talk to someone in the head office.
"The goal was to talk to people who actually operated the unit, knew about the startup, and knew what was double-blocked and what was purged," he explained. "We got responses from those people."
The responses varied widely, Jawad said, but overall were "great."
"A few of us went through and read every response, and the responses were blinded so we didn't know which refineries they came from," he said. "We read every response, and we categorized each response into different groups."
An overwhelming majority of the responses talked about keeping the hydrocarbon and air separate by monitoring the process flow.
"One of [Groves'] favorite statements is, 'In startup, shutdown or standby, the reactor is king.' You put steam or even oxygen in the reactor and heat it to high pressure. You keep everything separate by keeping the reactor at this high pressure. That was the overwhelming response."
Jawad said he estimates that of the 75 percent of FCC professionals who responded, "90 percent or more of those responses said that's how they do it. And everyone knows, in 'cat cracking 101,' that's the proper answer: to keep the reactor at high pressure and make sure air can't get back from the regenerator to the reactor, and hydrocarbons can't get from the main fractionator to the reactor."
Jawad accentuated the value to industry of having important discussions around improving safety, and then applying safe operation practices to a variety of configurations, rather than attempting to apply a one-size-fits-all practice.
Grove and Jawad also discussed the formation of an FCC subject matter expert group that developed lesson-learned tools through the Advancing Process Safety programs.
"In AFPM, there's a subgroup of us who help put together safety bulletins to help raise awareness in FCC units," Grove said. "At our first meeting, we had about 20 people or so. At our last meeting, we had about 45 people in our distribution. It's full of FCC geeks, like me, and we talk about safety. We love talking about cat cracker stuff.
"Everybody wants us to be safe. The more we talk about safety, the better it is."
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