(78c) Increasing the Capacity and Lowering the Energy Consumption of a Paraffin Fractionation Tower

A UK refiner has been operating a paraffin fractionation tower equipped with modern high-performance trays. They were experiencing operational difficulties and wanted to do a quick shut-down to fix the problems. Due to the severity of the problems any new equipment had to be on site within 4 weeks. In analyzing the performance of the tower Koch-Glitsch engineers realized that not only could the problems be fixed, but the capacity could be increased AND the energy consumption reduced. The equipment were designed for quick installation and delivered within 4 weeks. The shut-down time needed to install the equipment was very short compared to what was anticipated. The tower was started up without any problems and produced a better product while using less energy. The capacity of the new internals exceeded the capacity of the auxiliary equipment. At the next shut-down the axiliary equipment will be de-bottlenecked to enable the refiner to utilize the full capacity of the new internals. This paper describes the details of this revamp.