(208f) Opportunities to Minimize Flaring

Recently, the need for energy conservation and environmental protection has been gaining increased importance. Due to huge amount of gas flaring in oil and gas facilities we tried to find alternative methods to reduce, recover and reuse flare gases. Therefore, comprehensive process evaluation of plants especially units that produce flare gases, comprehensive monitoring of flow and composition of flare gases, investigation of existing flare systems and finding alternative choices to reuse flare gases have been done in 11 petroleum refineries, natural gas refineries and petrochemical plants. Based on experimental results, many alternative methods have been advised. Evaluation of flare tips, flare pilot and flare ignition system, purge gas and blanketing gas replacement, number of flare stacks in use and equipment redundancy and also installation of waste heat refrigeration unit, ejector vapor recovery system, flare gas recovery unit and local flare gas recovery system for FCC unit and delayed cocking unit have been recommended to minimize flaring.

In this paper we explain the expected results, operation guidelines and economics of each method to develop a global standard to reduce flaring and venting of hydrocarbon gas that is produced in oil and gas refineries. The correct selection of technology will take the unique challenges of the oil and gas processing industry into account.