Case Study

Flare System Retrofit

Texas

Permian

Oil & Gas Infrastructure

Relief System Optimization

The Challenge:

In 2015, a publicly traded pipeline transport company (“Client”), approached Halker Consulting (“Halker”) to evaluate a recently acquired gas plant. The existing relief system had issues with flare smoking and intermittent failures with the flare pilot. With plans to retrofit the existing relief system the Client needed support including recommendations for a new flare and flare knockout, verification of existing flare header sizing and confirmation of adequate existing PSV capacities. Their goal was to minimize CAPEX for the upgrade while ensuring a safe environment for their
operators.

The Solution:

The project was composed of two main components: evaluation of the existing piping, PSVs and the process evaluation for new components. The existing evaluation required a site walk down where Halker created isometric drawings of the existing system to pull accurate dimensions for relief evaluation, planned installation location of the flare and flare knockout, and other pertinent information. The process evaluation required extensive knowledge and expertise of API, ASME, and process modeling software. It was determined that the issues associated with the existing equipment were inadequate separation, which caused the smoking and velocities in excess of the flare design, which caused the pilot failure.

The Result:

Through Halker’s recommendations, the Client was able to install a properly sized flare, a liquid knockout with an automated condensate return, properly sized PSVs with corrections to orientation and routing and a contingency plan for expansion. This project started an ongoing relationship with the Client. Similar projects are being executed today for other assets. The continued relationship between the Client and Halker produced design efficiencies across multiple aspects of our projects. The Client elected to leverage these efficiencies by expanding scope while maintaining the same cost per project. The increased scope on recent projects includes: high-quality laser scans of facility piping and custom piping specification for 150# ANSI sour service.