House ok's bill, re-refine more used motor oil

[kschachn]

I love those videos. When I was in college I worked three summers for Chicago's power generation company at their largest coal fired plant. Since the boilers were negative pressure you could open the doors and look into the various areas of the boiler (always standing to the side of course, fearful of a sudden tripping of the induced-draft fans). You would stand there for a long time watching the swirling incandescent gas and ash, mesmerized by the velocity of the flow and turbulence. It really was something to see.

Originally Posted By: Shannow
Yes, pressure and air atomised burners into a slight negative pressure. No injector poppets to upset, and no cyclinders to scor and gum rings.

We can do 130MW (500MW thermal release in the boilers) on oil. But it's $270/MWh (27c/KWh) doing it.

Just like...that's a starting fire.

 

[Nyogtha]

The USEPA has pretty well eliminated burning fuel oil in petroleum refinery furnaces, which incidentally rendered refineries without ready access to natural gas economically infeasible to operate. Examples are the massive idled Hovensa refinery on St. Croix USVI and the Yabucoa refinery in Puerto Rico. Interestingly, "progressive" Europeans such as the Dutch not only still allow this but also don't require much in the way of SO2 controls allowing continued operation of refineries on Aruba & Curacao (currently both are operated by PDVSA, the Venezuelan state oil company, who had a 50% interest in Hovensa).

Largest refinery furnace I worked around was rated 1,000,000 BTU/hr heat release, the catalytic naphtha reformer built last decade in Garyville, LA (gas fired of course, a mixture of treated refinery offgas and purchased natural gas).

The video & description makes me imagine what the inside of a refinery FCCU regenerator looks like except with catalyst circulating through it. Those are pressurized with no inspection ports, the catalyst is quite abrasive as well as having bulk operating temperatures in the 1200°F to 1400°F range. We start those up on torch oil, most convenient is FCCU feed although when operating the FCCU Light Cycle Oil, a diesel range material rich in aromatics and therefore low cetane, can be used if supplemental heat is needed. Sustained operation on torch oil is undesireable as it sinters the catalyst quickly vs. normal operation of more gentle carbon burnoff resulting in more rapid permanent activity loss.

SOJ, the vast majority of non-cracking petroleum refineries in the USA shut down in the late 1970's and early 1980's as crude oil entitlements, a government subsidy to refine crude oil, came to an end. Every refinery I've worked at had a FCCU or a hydrocracker and with the passage of time and changes in the regulatory environment, often both.