TABLE OF CONTENTS Humans have instinctive drives, among which is the desire to fix things. I d bet, having read this far, that you have that inner desire to make repairs.
Growing inside me, growing stronger as I age, is a frantic, fanatical need to repair mechanical devices. There are times when I ve risked my life on a rickety scaffold to measure an outlet temperature from a heat exchanger.
My career is studded with the quick-fix solution to process problems. The quick fix that lost me a $100,000 engineering fee to redesign a fractionation tower. That overpowering desire to impose my will on the inanimate world, regardless of the consequences.
Place: Texaco Refinery, Convent, Louisiana
Time: 11:45 P.M. December 24, 2001
Weather: Cold, windy, rainy
Problem: Premature de-ethanizer flooding
Contract value: $240,000 (U.S.)
Liz, Jerry, Mike, and I were partners in expanding the capacity of a naphtha reformer plant producing aromatic base stocks. The bottleneck was the reboiled de-ethanizer, limited by flooding. Our job was to produce a process design to debottleneck the reformer from 40,000 BSD (barrels per day) up to 50,000 BSD of feed. But I was stymied by the following:
The calculated percent of jet or vapor flood was 65 percent at current feed rates (40,000 BSD).
The calculated percent of downcomer or liquid flood was 70 percent at 40,000 BSD.
The de-ethanizer was known to flood at 41,000 BSD feed.
The tower had been opened twice before, found to be both clean and in good mechanical condition.
