Flare System Retrofit
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.