High Efficiency, Ultra-Low Emission, Integrated Process Heater System

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The team of TIAX LLC, ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company, and Callidus Technologies, LLC conducted a six-year program to develop an ultra-low emission process heater burner and an advanced high efficiency heater design. This project addresses the critical need of process heater operators for reliable, economical emission reduction technologies to comply with stringent emission regulations, and for heater design alternatives that reduce process heater energy requirements without significant cost increase. The key project targets were NOx emissions of 10 ppm (@ 3% O2), and a heater thermal efficiency of 95 percent. The ultra low NOx burner was developed through a series of pilot-scale and field tests combined with computational fluid dynamic modeling to arrive at simultaneous low emissions and suitable flame shape and stability. Pilot scale tests were run at TIAX, at the 2 MMBtu/hr scale, and at Callidus at 8 MMBtu/hr. The full scale burner was installed on a 14 burner atmospheric pipestill furnace at an ExxonMobil refinery. A variety of burner configurations, gas tips and flame stabilizers were tested to determine the lowest emissions with acceptable flame shape and stability. The resulting NOx emissions were 22 ppm on average. Starting in 2001, Callidus commercialized the original ultra low NOx burner and made subsequent design improvements in a series of commercial burners evolving from the original concept and/or development. Emissions in the field with the ultra low-NOx burner over a broad spectrum of heater applications have varied from 5 ppm to 30 ppm depending on heater geometry, heater service, fuel and firing capacity. To date, 1550 of the original burners, and 2500 of subsequent generation burners have been sold by Callidus. The advanced heater design was developed by parametric evaluations of a variety of furnace and combustion air preheater configurations and technologies for enhancing convective and radiative heat transfer. The design evolution relied heavily on computational fluid dynamic predictions of design alternatives. The final design features modular separate radiant cells, each with one and two-side fired vertical tubes. The convection section configuration is vertical tube banks enclosed in the radiant channels. Commercial modular plate air preheaters are used. The predicted performance for the integrated advanced heater and Callidus burner is 95 percent efficiency with 9 ppm NOx emissions firing natural gas, and 12 ppm firing refinery gas. The total erected cost is less than a conventional heater with combustion air preheat.