11 Things You Need to Know About Hot Spots in Pressure Equipment

By Simon Yuen, P.E., Senior Advisor - Equipment Integrity at Suncor Energy Inc., and Ken Gottselig, Chief Engineer for Mechanical and Civil Engineering at BP America Production Company. This article appears in the March/April 2018 issue of Inspectioneering Journal.

15 Likes

7 Comments

Topics

Chemical Processing Industry

Chemicals are forms of matter with a constant composition and properties. Virtually everything that physically exists is made up of chemicals, or a mixture of multiple chemicals. For this reason, chemicals are incredibly important in the process industries. Along with virtually every...
Coker Units

Coker Units or Cokers, are pieces of oil refinery processing equipment used to recover specific elements from process residues, tar pitch, and residual oils. The coking process involves what is known as cracking; where long chains...
Damage Mechanisms

Damage Mechanisms (also referred to as degradation mechanisms) is a general term referring to any cause of problems or failures within process equipment. These can range from corrosion, to...
Downstream

The Oil and Gas industry is commonly divided into the three major sectors: Upstream, which includes oil and gas exploration and production;
Fitness For Service (FFS)

Fitness for Service (FFS) is a best practice and standard used by the oil & gas and chemical process industries for in-service equipment to determine its fitness for continued service. FFS serves as a rational basis for defining flaw acceptance limits and allows engineers to...
Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCCU)

Also known as a Cat Cracker, the Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCCU) is a piece of refining equipment used to convert the heavy portion of crude oil feedstock into lighter petroleum products, including...
Hot Spots

Hot Spots are overheated areas in high temperature equipment that are often a sign of ineffective refractory and a potential failure. They are fairly common occurrences in furnaces,
Hydrocracking Unit

Hydrocracking Units, also known as Hydrocrackers, are types of process equipment used in petroleum refining. Hydrocrackers use hydrogen and a catalyst to break down heavy crude oil molecules into various distillates and gasoline. It is also useful for converting...
Hydrotreater

A Hydrotreater or hydro-desulfurization (HDS) unit is the process equipment used in petroleum refining to remove sulfur and nitrogen compounds from natural gas and other refined petroleum products like deisel, gasoline, and jet fuel. In petroleum refining, it is important to...
Petrochemicals

Petrochemicals are the chemical products derived from petroleum and natural gas at different stages in the refining process. In some instances, a specific chemical included among the petrochemicals may also be obtained from other sources, such as coal or...
Pressure Vessels

Pressure Vessels are containers which are designed to hold liquids, vapors, or gases at high pressures, usually above 15 psig. Examples of common pressure vessels used in the petroleum refining and...

Utilizing On-Stream Inspection Techniques in the Petroleum/Petrochemical Industry in Lieu of Internal and Turnaround Inspections

September/October 1999 Inspectioneering Journal

This is part three of a three part article for the IJ describing some of the advanced on-stream inspection (OSI) methods available for use in inspection of pressure equipment in the petroleum and petrochemical industry. These methods can be used,...
Is Furnace Tube Temperature Measurement an Impossible Task?

March/April 2004 Inspectioneering Journal

The title question is often asked and more often than not, impossible to answer. This paper follows on from a previous discussion (Inspectioneering Journal Volume 4 Issue 1 Jan/Feb 1998) relating to the difficulties arising whilst attempting to...
Hydroprocessing Reactor Integrity

November/December 2004 Inspectioneering Journal

Demanding cleaner fuels Environmental regulators drive refiners to introduce bottom-of-the barrel conversion hydroprocessing units, to produce cleaner fuels. These include hydrotreaters and hydrocrackers with reactors that operate at high...
Avoiding HTHA Failures: An Owner-User Perspective of the HTHA Risk Mitigation Process

November/December 2013 Inspectioneering Journal

A recent High Temperature Hydrogen Attack (HTHA) failure atarefineryinthestateofWashingtonwasa“wakeupcall” to our industry. On April 2, 2010, the shell of a feed-effluent heat exchanger in the Naphtha Hydrotreating (NHT) unit at the Tesoro...
On-Stream Thickness Monitoring Versus Conventional Inspection in Refineries

January/February 2016 Inspectioneering Journal

Fixed equipment in a refinery can be susceptible to corrosion from the process side, necessitating an inspection strategy to understand the condition of that equipment. Online measurement of pipe and pressure vessel wall thickness is made possible...

What are hot spots?

Hot spots are regions on the pressure boundary of process equipment where the surface temperature exceeds the surrounding material temperature. These localized areas of overheating in pressure equipment can lead to deformation, or even loss of process containment, because when overheated, metals lose strength and may become susceptible to damage mechanisms.

Refineries and petrochemical facilities process fluids at temperatures in excess of 600 F. Elevated temperature equipment is often refractory lined internally to keep the pressure retaining wall temperature sufficiently low to permit less alloyed material to be used safely. Refractory degradation or failure exposes the pressure retaining wall to temperature above design and causes hot spots. In addition, equipment may experience higher than design maximum temperatures and form hot spots during runaway reactions, process stream decompositions, and other operational issues.

When a hot spot occurs, it is therefore important to understand the effects of elevated temperature have on the mechanical integrity of the equipment.

This content is available to registered users and subscribers

Create your free account and get access to:

Unlock one premium article of your choosing per month
Exclusive online content, videos, and downloads
Insightful and actionable webinars

GET STARTED

Interested in unlimited access? VIEW OUR SUBSCRIPTION OPTIONS

Current subscribers and registered users can log in now.

About the Authors

Simon Yuen, P.E., Senior Advisor - Equipment Integrity at Suncor Energy Inc.

Simon Yuen is currently the Senior Advisor of Suncor Energy Inc. in equipment integrity. He has over 35 years of industry experience in structural mechanics, inspection and materials/corrosion control. Read more »

Ken Gottselig, Chief Engineer for Mechanical and Civil Engineering at BP America Production Company

Ken Gottselig is the Chief Engineer for Mechanical and Civil Engineering at BP America Production Company. Ken has over 30 years of experience in fitness for service, mechanical integrity, and risk based inspection. Read more »

Comments and Discussion

Posted by Tim Haugen on April 25, 2018

Good article. Thank you for sharing! Log in or register to read the rest of this comment.

Posted by Muhammed Shoaib on May 21, 2018

Thanks for sharing, any idea when it would be... Log in or register to read the rest of this comment.

Posted by Ahmed Elrasheed on May 22, 2018

Very rich article. Thanks for sharing Log in or register to read the rest of this comment.

Posted by Alain Mujinga on June 13, 2018

Thank you for sharing this article. Log in or register to read the rest of this comment.

Posted by HECTOR CALDERON on August 21, 2018

Thanks for the technical information, excellent... Log in or register to read the rest of this comment.

Posted by Abdulrahman Alghamdi on February 3, 2019

Excellent and well stated. it is suggested to add... Log in or register to read the rest of this comment.

Posted by Miten Patel on March 28, 2019

Very informative article, thank you for sharing. Log in or register to read the rest of this comment.

Add a Comment

Please log in or register to participate in comments and discussions.

What are hot spots?

What kinds of equipment do hot spots typically affect in refineries and chemical plants?
How are hot spots detected?
How are hot spots measured?
What is the role of the inspector?
How are hot spots mitigated?
Can equipment continue to operate safely when hot spots are identified?
How serious is this issue for owner-operators?
What is the hot spot FFS assessment going to cover?
Where is this going, hopefully?
How will people have access to the methodology?
References

Partner Content

FTIS™ Furnace Tube Inspection System

Our proprietary furnace tube inspection system, FTIS is an ultrasonic inspection technology capable of rapid, automated fired heater coil inspection in refinery fired heaters. The data captured by our furnace tube inspection system is...

Visit the Quest Integrity Expo Page »