Advances in delayed coking heat

transfer equipment design

Kenneth A Catala and Mark S Karrs Lummus Technology Heat Transfer
Gary Sieli and Al Faegh Lummus Technology

T
he delayed coking process is used to crack lower coke drum pressures to increase liquid
heavy oils, normally vacuum residue, into yields and lower recycle rate (throughput ratio).
more valuable light liquid products, with Economics are also dictating larger diameter
less valuable gas and solid coke as by-products. coke drums (9.15m). Totally enclosed, fully auto-
The first delayed coking plant was built in 1930. mated top and bottom unheading devices have
While the delayed coking process has been evolv- shortened coke removal time. This has resulted
ing for 78 years, the last few years have seen in shorter cycle times, which then require higher
changes in feedstock that have had a major severities to produce coke with the same volatile
impact on the design and operation of delayed combustible material (VCM). All these factors
coking units. This paper addresses how these contributed to the need for larger capacity and
changes affect the heat transfer equipment and higher severity coker heaters.
the coker heater in particular. Delayed coking is an endothermic thermal
The increasing worldwide demand for liquid cracking process that requires large quantities of
petroleum products; the resulting increase in the heat to be supplied to the reacting feedstock at
price of crude oil; the differential cost between temperatures of 500°C+. All the process heat is
light and heavy crudes; and the shift toward supplied by the coker heater. The fluid must
processing lower quality,
lower cost crudes as well as
tar-sands bitumen have
created a need to convert
larger quantities of vacuum
residue to higher valued
liquid products. This has
resulted in an increase in
the application of delayed
coking.
These lower cost feed-
stocks typically have higher
metals and asphaltenes,
and some have higher total
acid numbers. The impuri-
ties in the crude tend to
concentrate in the residue
streams, making the result-
ing coker heater feed
“dirtier”, with a higher foul-
ing tendency.
Economics are driving
coker operations toward Figure 1 Coker heater, circa 1950 — box heater with double row of roof tubes

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 Figure 2 Single-fired coker heater design with double row of roof tubes, circa 1990

move through the heater to the coke drum as transfer to the tubes. This general design was
quickly as possible to minimise the amount of used for more than 20 years and, even though
coke that is deposited in the heater tubes and the shape of the heater later evolved, the double
downstream piping. This coke causes increased row of tubes suspended from the roof (with tiles
tube metal temperature and pressure drop and, backing them) continued to be used until about
moreover, the rate of coke deposition determines 1990 (Figure 2.).
the coker heater run length. The heater design Prior to about 1990, delayed coking units were
must therefore consider feedstock quality, oper- small: few were larger than 1.1 million metric
ating conditions, need for future expansion and tons per annum (MMTA). Most had a single pair
possible changes in feedstock characteristics. of coke drums, one being filled while the other
was de-inventoried. All the heaters were single
Changes in heater design fired (ie, tubes were heated from one side only).
Lummus’ first delayed coker heater designs date Firing from only one side results in a large differ-
back to 1940 and consisted of small, box-shaped ence between the peak heat flux and the average
heaters with double rows of tubes suspended heat flux. The subsequent high peak heat flux
from the roof and a single row of tubes on each results in high film temperature, which leads to
wall (Figure 1). The process fluid was heated an accelerated laydown of coke inside the heater
only in the radiant section. The double row of tubes. The average heat flux rates for coker heat-
tubes was backed with tiles that increased heater ers was therefore lower than for general refinery
efficiency by increasing the convective heat process heaters, in the range of 24 400 kcal/hr

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m2. The low average heat flux
rates required relatively high
residence times, which also
promote coke deposition.
Early designs had a number
of small liberation gas burn-
ers in the floor and the height
of the furnace could be small
because the flame lengths
were only about half as long
per unit heat release as
modern, staged-fuel, low-NOx
burners.
After 1990, there was a
significant new development
in the design of the coker
heater: the double fired coker
heater design. This patented
design1 put the coil in the
centre of the box and the Figure 3 Flux distribution around circumference of tubes2
burners against the wall so
the tubes could be heated from both sides.
The average heat flux rate could then be
increased by 50% with no increase in peak
heat flux or film temperature, as illustrated
in Figure 3. When the heat flux at points 1
and 7 of the tube heated from both sides
equals the heat flux at point 1 of the tube
heated from one side, the average is 50%
higher. The resulting reduction in coil
length reduced pressure drop and resi-
dence time and allowed for increased
capacity per coil. The reduced residence
time in the coker heaters results in a
slightly higher outlet temperature required
for the same conversion and yields. The
patent has been licensed by a select group
of furnace designers.

Contemporary heater designs

Contemporary delayed coking units have
been designed for capacities larger than
6.0 MMTA and have multiple pairs of
large-diameter coke drums. The coker
heaters are designed for very high capacity
(Figures 4 and 5) in order to limit the
number of heaters per pair of coke drums:
the resulting heater designs therefore have
higher mass velocity and pressure drop.
Heater tube diameter has not increased
because increasing the tube diameter
would raise the film temperature and tube Figure 4 Contemporary four-cell heater with internal walls

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 Coil materials
Coke deposition inside the heater
tubes leads to an increase in the
tube metal temperature and pres-
sure drop. The heater run-length
will normally be controlled by the
End-of-Run (EOR) metal
temperature.
Older units that processed clean
feedstocks generally used 21/4 Cr-1
Mo or 5 Cr-1/2 Mo tubes. The
majority of contemporary units
have been engineered with 9%
Chrome-1% Molybdenum (T9) tubes
due to higher sulfur and higher
EOR temperatures. Other alloys
have been considered and selec-
tively used. TP 317L has been
considered for feedstocks high in
naphthenic acids, but only if the
heater operating temperatures are
Figure 5 Contemporary four-cell heater with air cooled walls in the corrosion range. Other auste-
nitic alloys have been used to extend
metal temperature, thus accelerating radiant run-length due to their strength at higher
coking and reducing heater run-length. In the temperatures, which enables setting the end-of-
resulting tall, narrow firebox designs, the burner run temperature higher. Due to the high sulfur
operation and flux profile become critical to content in the feeds, stabilized austenitic alloys
achieving the required run-length. such as TP347H or TP321H would be required.
However, if there is any chance that present or
future feedstocks
contain chlorides,
austenitic alloys
cannot be used.
Allowable rupture
stress values of the
various tube materi-
als are plotted in
Figure 6.
As evidenced in the
curves, the stress
values for 9 Cr-1 Mo
plus Vanadium (T91)
are much higher than
for 9 Cr-1 Mo (T9).
However, the most
recent edition of API
530 has set the limit-
ing design metal
temperature for alloy
T91 at 650(C because
of lack of reliability
Figure 6 Rupture stress curves3 for the rupture

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strength above this temperature. The material is
also difficult to fabricate, so use has been
limited.

Cleaning methods
When the design metal temperature or EOR
pressure drop is reached, the heater coil must be
decoked. Originally, the only method of decoking
the tubes was mechanical cleaning by turbining.
Heater tube ends had headers such as “mule ear”
or “bull nut” types for return fittings. These were
H-shaped headers with removable plugs, which
frequently leaked (Figure 7). Tubes were
expanded or rolled into a tube sheet in the
fitting. Later, the fittings were designed to be
welded to the tube ends. The headers had to be
located outside the radiant chamber in header
boxes. When it was time for decoking, the
furnace was cooled, the plugs were removed, and
each tube was mechanically cleaned with a tool Figure 7 “Mule Ear” type return header
that cut the coke from the inside of the tube.
The introduction of steam air decoking was
faster and made it possible to replace the head-
ers with 180-degree U-bends welded to the tubes
and located inside the firebox. This lowered the
cost and decreased the coil pressure drop during
normal operation. Some users kept the headers
on one end of the coil or near the outlet end for
inspection after decoking.
A more recent development is “pigging,” where
a soft plastic plug (or “pig”) with sharp cutting
blades is forced through the coil using hydraulic
pressure, cutting the coke as it travels along the
tube length (Figure 8). Pigging has been adapted
as a quick and easy method of mechanical decok-
ing. If return headers with plug fittings are used Figure 8 Pigging options
in the coil, the plugs must be contoured to
prevent the pig from lodging in the bends. rate to effectively break the coke off the tube
Pigging is less harmful to the coil and results in wall, sweeping the spalled coke into the coke
cleaner heater tubes compared to steam air drum. This method relies on the difference
decoking since it is done at lower temperature between the coefficient of thermal expansion of
and is less erosive. The heater must still be taken the deposited coke and steel. During on-line
out of service, flushed and cooled before it can spalling, one individual coil of a heater is cleaned
be pigged. by spalling, while the other pass(es) remain in
operation. Normally, the capacity of the passes
Increased on-stream factor by on-line spalling not being spalled can be increased to minimise
As the feeds were getting heavier, the run lengths the impact on unit capacity. On-line spalling has
were getting shorter and, to increase the on- been successfully conducted on most modern
stream factor of the units, on-line spalling was double-fired coker heaters. It has been done on
developed. The on-line spalling method uses two-pass heaters, where one pass operates while
steam and/or condensate combined with modu- the other is spalled, as well as four-pass heaters.
lating tube skin temperatures and steam flow Cleaning by on-line spalling is almost as

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 effective as mechanical cleaning or steam air to about 80% lower heating value (LHV) without
decoking. Several cycles of on-line spalling can air preheat or some other form of waste heat
be tolerated before off-line cleaning is required. recovery. The feed to the heater typically comes
On-line spalling is erosive, particularly when from the coker fractionating column bottoms
performed aggressively, and requires some operating in the range of 280-300°C. There is a
protection for the fittings, especially near the need to limit crossover temperature to prevent
outlet of the coil. This has been accomplished reaction in the convection or shock tubes and,
using cast return bends, with heavier back walls considering the nature of the fluid, the flue gas
near the outlet of the coil. Some plants have also cannot be cooled lower than about 370°C by
tried fittings with hard face coatings made of preheating the feed alone. The delayed coking
high-Cobalt metallurgy. process requires some superheating of steam,
which typically is done in the heater convection
On-line pigging section; however, this duty is normally small.
Continuous disposition of vacuum residue is Steam can be generated with the waste heat,
critical in refinery operations. A delayed coker but this requires additional pieces of equipment
processing a large quantity of vacuum residue such as steam drums, pumps, piping and
cannot be shut down without a major impact on controls, and a demand for the steam. More typi-
refinery operations. There has been a push to cally, combustion air preheating has been used
increase delayed coking unit on-stream intervals to raise the efficiency to a minimum of 90% on
to a minimum of four years to coincide with contemporary designs.
refinery turnaround schedules. A cold shutdown Designing the unit for combustion air preheat-
to decoke the heaters would require an extended ing requires making provision for fan failure
outage, impacting upstream and downstream and/or air preheat system maintenance.
units. While on-line spalling has already Typically, there needs to be a bypass of the flue
extended heater run length, “on-line pigging” has gas around the air preheater (APH) to the stack
resulted in a further extension. in case the induced draft fan fails. Some units
The concept of on-line pigging was developed specify ambient air doors to provide natural draft
at a Lummus-designed plant in South America operation in the event of combustion air (forced
in the early 1990s. In this concept, the heaters draft) fan failure. In other cases, a spare forced
are designed so that one cell of a heater can be draft fan is provided together with a full-size
taken off-line to be pigged while the other cells combustion air bypass around the APH.
continue to operate in hydrocarbon service. This Electrical power must be reliable for the
requires that the cell be isolated from the rest of multiple-fan scheme to work.
the heater or, preferably, that multiple smaller The choice of individual air preheat systems
heaters be installed instead of a single large versus a combined air preheat system should be
heater. In the case of heaters with air preheat, based on economics and comparative analysis.
individual air preheaters are preferred to single The individual air preheat system offers better
combined units for the ease of on-line pigging. flexibility and the ability to isolate an individual
Bitumen is derived from Tar Sands and is heater for on-line pigging or steam air decoking.
processed in facilities known as upgraders. Many If there is a future need to increase unit capacity,
upgraders use delayed coking to upgrade the having heaters designed with individual air
bitumen into synthetic crude oil. The bitumen preheat systems simplifies expansion. Lummus’
contains inorganic material (clay), which tends practice is to use individual rather than combined
to deposit on the heater tube wall together with air preheat systems to provide the added flexibil-
the coke and cannot be removed by spalling or ity, as the equipment cost differential has
steam air decoking. Inorganic solids must be narrowed with increased capacities.
removed mechanically by pigging: the ability to
pig on-line is critical in keeping these upgraders Oil firing
on stream. Most coker heaters fire fuel gas. The delayed
coking process produces coker offgas, which is
Heater efficiency normally used to fire the heaters. However, in
The efficiency of a delayed coker heater is limited refineries where natural gas is in short supply,

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the coker offgas is often used to balance the over-
all refinery fuel gas requirement. In these cases,
the coker heater needs to be designed to fire fuel
oil, which creates new challenges for coker heater
design, particularly for the double-fired design.
The double-fired design uses a large number of
small liberation burners fired upward and against
the side wall of the radiant chamber. While the
objective is to create uniform heating without
alternating hot and cold areas along the tube
length, this is not possible with oil firing. The
minimum capacity for an oil burner is limited by
the tip size in the oil gun: if the tips are too
small, particles contained in the oil will plug the
tip. As a result, there are fewer oil burners, but
of higher capacity. The oil flame cannot be
directed at the wall and the flame length, and
hence flux profile, is different from a low-NOx gas
burner of similar liberation. All current gas-fired
delayed coker heater designs have low-NOx burn-
ers and some have ultra-low-NOx burners: these
gas burners generally have relatively flat flux
profiles that are compatible with the process. The
area of minimum heat flux is located near the
floor, where the outlet tubes are located, and the
highest heat flux is in the furnace, where the feed
is cooler. Vertical flux profiles from oil burners
will be highest near the floor. Figure 9 shows the
relative vertical flux profile for a gas burner and
an oil burner. The non-uniform horizontal flux Figure 9 Typical Vertical flux profile for gas burner and
and the vertical flux profile difference associated oil burner4
with oil fuel firing have a negative effect on
heater run length. point.
If the coker heater is to burn dual fuels simulta- Liquid firing emissions are greatly increased
neously, the heat input to a given coil must be when compared to gas firing: in addition to NOx
uniform and the combustion air distributed in a and CO, SOx and particulates will increase.
manner that allows each burner to get a sufficient Finally, if the fuel is heavy oil containing sulphur
amount of air. Schemes where some burners burn and vanadium, the tube support system and
fuel oil and others burn gas are difficult to control refractory may have to be designed using differ-
because the liberation per burner is never equal ent materials depending on the level of these
and the combustion air distribution results in too contaminants in the fuel oil.
much or too little air or some combination of Lummus has designed a double-fired coker
both, resulting in secondary combustion and flame heater with burners firing a combination of fuel
impingement on tubes. gas and heavy fuel oil that has been operating
With oil burners, there are other issues to successfully for over two years.
consider:
• Turndown is limited to 3:1 from maximum Alternative fuels
liberation Although the cost of solid fuels (coal) has risen
• Convection tubes must be designed for soot recently, petroleum coke demand has not kept up
removal and may require the use of studded with the increase in supply. The rise in natural
rather than finned tubes gas price has been much greater, and new grass-
• Heater efficiency may be limited by acid dew roots coker designs sometimes consider exporting

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 Natural Gas Firing Syngas Firing

Figure 10 CFD simulation of refractory wall temperature, deg K

the coker offgas in order to upgrade the value. A typical delayed coker will produce sufficient
There have been several gasifier projects built and petroleum coke to generate enough syngas to fire
in planning using petroleum coke as feed, mainly the furnace as well as export syngas for IGCC or
to produce syngas fuel for power production via other uses. However, in order to start up the
gas turbines in Integrated Gasification Combined delayed coker or operate it with the syngas unit
Cycle (IGCC) arrangements.5,6 With the increasing down, the furnaces will need to be fired on an
size of delayed coking plants, it will become feasi- imported fuel. This requires burner flexibility to
ble to integrate the delayed coker and gasifier so meet the liberation requirements based on the
that syngas can be used to fire the delayed coker fuels’ differing molecular weights and heating
heater, using a less valuable by-product to allow values. Table 1 compares the properties of a typi-
export of the higher valued fuel gas. cal syngas fuel generated from petroleum coke
The use of syngas as fuel will impact the design versus a typical coker offgas.
of the furnace as well as other critical compo- Burners must meet the range of operation
nents (eg, burners, flue gas handling equipment). required for both fuels, and such burner technol-
ogy is currently being developed. Lummus has
Comparison of offgas and syngas undertaken computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
studies of these burners and associated firing
Offgas fuel Syngas fuel patterns (Figure 10) to confirm that the expected
Molecular weight 21.0 22.4 flux profiles will meet the requirements needed
Lower heating value, kcal/kg 11 500 2365
to maintain unit run lengths for delayed coker
Lower heating value, kcal Nm3 10 190 2155
Comb. air/fuel mass ratio 18.5 3 heaters.
Flue gas/liberation, Nm3/Gcal 1358 1245
NOx emission regulations
NOx emission regulations are becoming more
Table 1 stringent worldwide. Further reductions in NOx

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levels will require coker heaters
designed with selective catalytic
reduction (SCR) units. The deci-
sion to add an SCR unit to a
delayed coker heater must consider
whether or not the unit will be
permitted to operate with the SCR
bypassed in an emergency, such as
loss of the induced draft fan or air
preheater. Although delayed coking
unit stack heights are normally
determined by the cutting deck
elevation, it would require a much
taller stack to operate on natural
draft if the gas would have to pass
through the SCR before going to
the stack. If bypassing is not Figure 11 HELIXCHANGER tube bundle
permitted, a low-pressure-drop
SCR reactor combined with a taller
stack or steam ejector to temporar-
ily generate the necessary draft can
be used. Lummus believes the
future trend will be to use air
preheating, low-NOx burners, and
SCR for NOx reduction.

Process heat integration

With longer achievable run lengths
between offline cleaning of the
coker heaters, focus has shifted to
other heat transfer equipment that
may become the limiting factor for
unit on-stream factor and turna-
round planning. The coker preheat
exchanger train handles the heavy, Figure 12 Conventional exchanger in bitumen service - fouled after nine
viscous feed (which has been bitu- months
men in some current designs) and
is subject to significant fouling. The Helixchanger • The helical flow path allows shellside velocities
heat exchanger (Figure 11), developed by significantly higher (approximately two to three
Lummus Technology Heat Transfer, is a helically times higher) than the average cross-flow veloci-
baffled exchanger proven to provide a significant ties associated with equivalent segmental baffle
decrease in the rate of fouling in several coker designs. The average velocities are higher and
services (Figures 12 and 13). It has been applied the velocity distribution profile is more uniform
in coking service and equivalent viscous fouling • The shellside flow impacts the tube wall at an
services in crude and vacuum preheat trains, and angle, causing the shear forces acting on the tube
operators have reported achieving minimum two wall to be significantly higher
to three times longer run lengths between clean- • Uniform flow velocities through the tube
ing than earlier segmental baffle exchangers.7 bundle – associated with the relatively constant
The Helixchanger exchanger exhibits reduced shellside flow area — result in no abrupt changes
fouling characteristics compared to segmental in direction, no corners, and few dead spaces for
baffle exchangers as a result of several features eddy recirculation and fouling accumulation.
inherent in the design: This in turn translates into more uniform tube

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 (reduced surface required; reduced shellside
fouling)
• Compressor interstage and discharge coolers
(reduced surface required; reduced shellside
pressure drop )

Conclusions
The design of the coker heater has evolved to
meet the changing needs of the delayed coking
process while improving the on-stream factor
and extending run length. Technology exists or
is being developed to meet the anticipated future
heat transfer needs of the delayed coking proc-
ess. The heat transfer engineer, working together
with the process design engineer and client, can
Figure 13 Replacement Helixchanger bundle — provide equipment designs optimised to meet
inspection after three years of operation the specific requirements of the process.

wall temperatures and tubeside temperature Acknowledgement

distribution. Pigging Photos Courtesy of Eveready Industrial Decoking.
As most delayed coker exchangers are of float-
References
ing head construction because of fouling
1 US Patent Number 5,078,857 Delayed Coking and Heater
considerations, tube bundle change-out to a heli-
Therefor, M. Shannon Melton.
cally baffled bundle design is a low-cost and
2 Meklar L A, Fairall R S, Evaluation of Radiant Heat Absorption
low-downtime option for increased heat recov- Rates in Tubular Heaters, Petroleum Refiner, June 1952.
ery, reduced pressure drop and reduced fouling 3 API Standard 530 Calculation of Heater-Tube Thickness in
for existing delayed coking plants. Such improve- Petroleum Refineries.
ments have been noted for exchangers in 4 The John Zink Combustion Handbook.
bitumen service applied in other upstream units 5 O’Keefe L, Commercially Operating IGCC Projects Worldwide,
(eg, crude and vacuum distillation units’ preheat Gas Turbine World, Jan-Feb 2006.
exchanger trains) (Figures 12 and 13). 6 Short List of viable proposed IGCC power and polygeneration
Proven applications in delayed coking services projects, Gas Turbine World 2008 IGCC Reference Guide, Vol 38,
No. 1, Jan-Feb 2008.
include:
7 Chunangad K S, Master B I, Fouling Mitigation using Helixchanger
• Coker feed preheat exchangers (reduced surface
Heat Exchangers, Int’l Conference on Heat Exchanger Fouling and
required; reduced shellside pressure drop and
Cleaning, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2003.
fouling)
• HCGO product/pumparound coolers (reduced
surface required; reduced fouling)
• Coker fractionator overhead condenser Links
(reduced surface required; reduced shellside
pressure drop) More articles from: CB&I
• Debutaniser overhead and stripper overhead
More articles from the following categories:
condensers (reduced surface required) Delayed coking Heat Transfer
• Debutaniser reboiler and stripper reboiler

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