Flexibility and Real-time Measurement in Flares

In the refining, petrochemical and chemical industry, you rarely have a straightforward application. They are difficult and complex, presenting many unique challenges.  

• Flexibility - Often times the waste streams are collected from different refining and chemical plant processes and sent to a flare stack for destruction. From there, the flare must handle different waste streams and combinations of waste streams, all with unique compositions. They can range from pure methane to waste streams of up to 60% steam or even a waste stream with 50% ammonia and 50% steam mixture. In these cases the flare design system has to be flexible. 
• Real-time Measurement - The flare can be designed to simply inject the maximum quantity of assist gas required for a worst case scenario. This method results in using significantly more assist-gas than is necessary which will increase fuel costs. It could however, also have the real-time ability to adjust the quantity of assist-gas injected into the waste stream to ensure destruction efficiencies of 98% and higher. By using measurements like these, the process can be adjusted in real-time to work with actual conditions, which optimizes fuel savings.

So how can you help your flare be flexible & measure in real-time?

1. Install a continuous monitoring system that has a uniform response to a wide variety of combustibles, including such gases as ammonia, propylene, ethylene oxide, and BTEX. 
2. Use a micro-combustion type calorimeter with accurate measurement and control of multiple gas mixtures under dynamic conditions, which enables the use of adaptive assist to be applied to the flares.