(197c) Revamping a Giant C3-Splitter Tower

With an abundance of affordable natural gas and continued growth in the utilization of poly-ethylene and poly-propylene several very large splitter towers were built in the recent past. The purpose of these splitters is to produce polymer grade olefins as an overhead product and to minimize the fraction of the olefins in the bottoms product. Koch-Glitsch recently revamped a large diameter C3-splitter to increase the capacity and improve the propylene purity and recovery. This presentation highlights the steps that were taken in this revamp. This includes large scale pilot studies, CFD calculations, innovative designs, and dealing with challenges during the installation process. This revamp was successful and demonstrates that it is possible to achieve high capacity and efficiency in large diameter towers by carefully choosing the fractionation devices.