FCCU Considerations

[StressGuy]

I've got a fair amount of experience in pipe stress analysis for a number of chemical and refinery piping systems.

However, I'm going to be going into an area that I don't have a lot of experience with - an FCC unit. I've worked in FCC units before, but I've not been involved with the reactor piping itself. I do have some more senior people around that I'll be working with, so I'm not totally in the dark.

But, if any of my distinguished colleagues here have any tips or special things that I'll need to take into consideration here, I'd appreciate the input.

Edward L. Klein
Pipe Stress Engineer
Houston, Texas

"All the world is a Spring"

All opinions expressed here are my own and not my company's.

 

[codeeng]

Consider FEA on the entire system including the plenum inside the Reactor. Cyclone suppliers often provide this service and unless you have an experience team I would strongly recommend this route.

 

[ApC2Kp]

To StressGuy,
The Engineering Design Associates website had some info for FCC design and analysis jobs they have done.

http://www.engineer.ca

Their webpages from Oct.2003 had pdf files of General arrangement drawing and simplified stress analysis results of the spent catalyst and regenerated catalyst portions of model. You can retrieve the old webpages from

http://www.waybackmachine.org

by entering the

http://www.engineer.ca

site name and Oct.2003 date.
You might want to consider retaining the consulting services of EDA, if it appears they have some more expertise than available in your organization. Much of the technology and expertise is being lost due to retirements and corporate consolidations.

 

[StressGuy]

Thanks for the responses. Now that I'm on the job, it looks like it is not quite as hard core as I feared. I've been studying all I can on what the parts of an FCCU are and how they work. It looks like this is a revamp of some internals and also changes to the flue gas system out of the regenerator, and I'm pretty comfortable with that. No changes to the standpipe and reactor riser that I can see.

It would have made for a nice addition to my skills. I agree it seems like the industry is losing it's knowledge base, particularly here in the U.S.

Edward L. Klein
Pipe Stress Engineer
Houston, Texas

"All the world is a Spring"

All opinions expressed here are my own and not my company's.