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Coker Units, or Cokers, are oil refinery processing units that convert residual oil and process residues leftover after the initial crude distillation into higher value products and petroleum coke, a coal-like material used as a fuel input or a manufacturing raw material in a variety of industries. During the coking process, residual oil from the vacuum distillation unit is transferred into large, vertical reactors known as coke drums. There, it is placed under high heat and pressure in a process called thermal cracking to separate the lighter vapors, including hydrocarbon gases, naphtha, and light and heavy gas oils (which exit at the top of the coke drum for further refining) from the solidified petroleum coke. This coke will build up in the drum, and once full, the drum must be taken offline and the coke removed using high pressure water cutters for either reclamation or storage.

Types of Coker Units

There are two primary types of coker units used in petroleum refining: delayed coker units (DCU) and fluid coker units. Of the two, the delayed coker unit (DCU) is by far the most common and involves two or more drums working in tandem. When one drum is taken offline, production is simply shifted to the next drum. This allows a facility to have one coker online continuously, avoiding unnecessary downtime. In a fluid coker, the feed goes through the same thermal cracking process, but the formed coke is transferred to a separate heater as a fluidized solid where some of it is burned to provide the heat necessary for the coker to continue to convert residual oil into gases, distillate liquids, and coke. Fluid coking can provide a higher distillate yield and a lower coke yield than delayed coking.

References

1. Johnson, E., Kaley, L., and Tallin, A., 1996, "Reliability of Coke Drums," Inspectioneering Journal, The Woodlands, Texas, 2(6), pp. 4-6.
2. U.S. Energy Information Administration, "Coking is a refinery process that produces 19% of finished petroleum product exports," January 28, 2013, http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=9731.

Related Topics

• Aboveground Storage Tanks (ASTs)
• Boiler Tubes
• Boilers
• Bolts
• Cooling Towers
• Crude Distillation Unit (CDU)
• Deaerators
• Fired Heaters
• Fixed Equipment
• Flanges
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• Furnace Tubes
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• Heat Exchangers
• HF Alkylation Units
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• Vacuum Distillation Unit (VDU)
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