The Effect of the Plant Specification on the Design, Installation and Commissioning of Refinery Process Heaters

Abstract

This is a study of the effect of the Plant Specification on the design, installation and commissioning of a large scale test facility for evaluating burners used in petroleum refinery process heaters. The objective is to examine the project life of a process heater plant so as to draw recommendations which can be applied to a similar project involving a medium sized process plant. This work is based on a case study which takes as an example a million pound process heater plant (Burner Test Rig, BTR) built at the BP laboratories, Sunbury on Thames. The BTR project life was divided into three stages: Process Development, Project Engineering and Operation. During the examination of these stages it was decided to carry out an operability study using cause and symptom equations to record the results. These equations may be used in a computer program, to be developed by other workers, to generate fault trees as an aid to fault finding. Instrumentation, control and safety circuits are an important feature of the BTR. A detailed examination is included and presented as tables summarising the location and function of these instruments....