PRC Europe is an annual international downstream oil and gas event, which gathers industry leaders to discuss upgraded business models and new technologies, in order to face the global challenges of the downstream industry and make contribution to the Oil and Gas industry development.

After successfully presenting innovations during PRC Europe 2018, APEX Group will bring continuous evolutions in technology during PRC Europe 2019. Dr. Jens Kitzhofer, R&D Manager, will present APEX Group’s developments and solutions in order to reduce operational expenses by Maximized Air Preheating System of fired heaters.

Read more: http://prceurope.com/.

Reduce operational expenses by Maximized Air Preheating System (MAPS) of fired heaters.
Theses of the presentation

APEX Group designs, sells and constructs heavy-duty plate-type Heat Exchangers for handling large volumes of gases for heat recovery and gas treatment applications. The operation principle consists of cold gases (e.g. air) and hot gases (e.g. flue gas) flowing through alternating parallel channels in a cross or (most efficiently) countercurrent arrangement.

In refineries, the heat exchangers are applied as air preheaters for fired heaters, which constitutes as the process heart of a refinery. Due to the pre-heated air, the efficiency of the combustion process is greatly increased. Overall, the installation of a heat exchanger as part of a fired heater system considerably reduces the operational expenses (OpEx) and CO₂ emissions due to a lower fuel consumption. The Heat Exchangers are usually designed to have a minimum metal temperature close to, but above the acid dew point (in the range of 120 – 140°C) to avoid condensation of H₂SO₄ and as a result corrosion of the heat transfer surface.

The concept of further reduction of the flue gas temperature was, up to now, limited due to material issues. We applied our in-house coating expertise and our operational experience, from over 500 heat exchangers from the past 20 years to develop a maximized air preheating system (MAPS) breaking through the limitation of minimum metal temperature.

The heat exchanger for MAPS is designed as a robust and reliable heat recovery system operating below the acid dew point, yet above the water dew point (in the range of 80 – 90° C), with the purpose of capturing a large portion of H₂SO₄ from exhaust gases inside the heat exchanger through condensation. Further reduction of the flue gas temperature with 40 – 50°C below the current standards increases the efficiency of the fired equipment with a resulting reduction in CO₂ emissions. MAPS helps in significantly reducing the discharge of harmful CO₂ and H₂SO₄ components into the atmosphere and additionally helps in significantly reducing the fuel consumption. These advantages are, however, achieved with a minimal increase in investment. For numerous applications, the economical balance is positive. APEX Group will be pleased to participate to the evaluation of your potential applications.

The presentation will give a detailed description of requirements (technical, commercial, environmental) for the implementation of the MAPS concept.