Eliminating Catalyst Cool Down as Critical Path in a Turnaround
Reducing turnaround duration can dramatically increase refinery profitability. Historically, cooling hydrotreater, hydrocracker, or reformer catalyst has often been on the critical path when maintenance was being performed on those units. This white paper will demonstrate an alternative approach to catalyst cooling that eliminates nitrogen injection and shortens the duration of this task.
As with most major process plants, refineries and petrochemical plants periodically need to shut down the entire plant or major portions of it for major maintenance activities. These time periods are referred to as ‘turnarounds’ and are time periods of intense activity.
Once the plant shuts down, a considerable amount of money is being spent without any revenue being generated. So, there is immense pressure to work as efficiently as possible to get the plant back on stream as soon as possible. However, there are always events that are on the ‘critical path’. If those events can be shortened, it’s possible to be able to decrease the turnaround duration and get the plant back on-stream faster enabling it to generate revenue quicker.
