(115b) Best Practices in Heat Tracing Pilot Plants

Designing pilot plants to operate successfully at elevated temperatures is a common need across many industries and organizations.  Methods that are common in industrial environments often are difficult, costly or impossible to apply on a smaller pilot plant scale. Pilot plant scale requires special approaches with attendant design and operability issues to run successfully.

This presentation will address the major problem areas the pilot plant design faces. These include the higher heat losses a small pilot plant develops, the operability issues that the ever changing nature of pilot plants incurs, the safety problems associated with heating and the maintenance problems created by heated units. A discussion of the attendant safety issues will also be given particularly for electrically classified areas.  These include surface temperature limitations, code requirements and equipment approvals.

The presentation will then look at the most common approaches used throughout the industry. This will include a discussion of steam tracing, self-limiting heat tracing, resistance heater heat tracing, preheaters and heated enclosures. The advantages and disadvantages of each will be presented. Brief guidelines for successful installation will also be given. 

The presentation will focus on trying to help the designer identify the different requirements of their particular application and identify which approaches best meet their specific needs highlighting that the best practice often changes with the specific situation.