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| Process Heater (courtesy of AMETEK Process Instruments) |
Process heaters are used throughout the hydrocarbon and chemical processing industries in places such as refineries, gas plants, petrochemicals, chemicals and synthetics, olefins, ammonia and fertilizer plants. Some plants may have only two or three heaters while larger plants can have more than fifty.
Most of the unit operations in these plants require red heaters and furnaces. These operations include:
Most of the unit operations in these plants require red heaters and furnaces. These operations include:
- Distillation
- Fluidized Catalytic Cracking (FCC)
- Alkylation
- Catalytic Reforming
- Continuous Catalyst Regeneration (CCR)
- Thermal Cracking
- Coking
- Hydrocracking
- Start-Up Heater — Starts-up a process unit where it is required to heat up a fluidized bed of catalyst before adding the charge.
- Fired Reboiler — Provides heat input to a distillation column by heating the column bottoms and vaporizing a portion of it. Used where heat requirement is greater than can be obtained from steam.
- Cracking Furnace — Converts larger molecules into smaller molecules, usually with a catalyst (pyrolysis furnace).
- Process Heater — Brings feed to the required temperature for the next reaction stage.
- Process Heater Vaporizer — Used to heat and partially vaporize a charge prior to distillation.
- Crude Oil Heater — Heats crude oil prior to distillation.
- Reformer Furnace — Chemical conversion by adding steam and feed with catalyst.
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