Overview of 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 of hydrocarbons are broken down into shorter chains by heating them to their thermal cracking temperature in a furnace. In the coking unit, residual oil from the vacuum distillation column or the atmospheric distillation column is processed into hydrocarbon gases, naphtha, light and heavy gas oils, and petroleum coke. 

There are three types of cokers used in refineries: delayed cokers, fluid cokers and flexicokers. Of the three, the delayed coker unit (DCU) is by far the most common and involves several drums working in tandem. 

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