Gas Flare Design Debottlenecking Using Pinch Analysis

Abstract

Gas flaring is concerned with the combustion of lighter ends of hydrocarbon mostly produced in association with crude oil. Flare networks are designed to handle the gas volume required to be flared. Most times, this flare networks are in close proximity but still have independent flare stacks, increasing risk to environment and cost on infrastructures. There is a need to integrate the flare networks in facilities within same area and through the application of Pinch Analysis concept, the resultant flare network can be optimized to give a system having optimal tail and header pipe sizes that will reduce cost and imp act on environment. In the light of the foregoing, the conce pt of pinch analy sis was used in debottlenecking integrate d gas flare networks from a flow station and a refinery in close proximity. Both flare networks were integrated and the resultant gas flare network was optimized to obtain the optimum pipe header and tail pipe sizes with the capacity to withstand the inventory from both facilities and satisfy the set constraints such as Mach number, noise, RhoV 2 and backpressure. Mach number was set at 0.7 for tail pipes and 0.5 for header pipes, noise limit was not to exceed 80 dB upstream and 115 dB downstream the sources, RhoV 2 was limited to 6000 kg/m/s 2 and the back press ure requirement was source dependent respectively. The fir e case scenario was considered, as it is the worst-case scenario in the studies. When pinch analysis was applied in debottlenecking the combined gas flare network, it g ave smaller tail and header pipe sizes which is more economical. A 20% decrease in pipe sizes was recorded at the end of the study.