Energy & Environmental Management Focus on: Boilers, Burners & Controls fuels to burn or combust and smaller overall footprint. Maintaining control Most engineers have never seen electric process heaters and heat exchangers of these sizes or capabilities. So, naturally, some of the most common questions about larger process heaters have to do with control, including what additional elements are needed to ramp up the heater and how that affects the existing electrical system. Just because larger electric heaters have not traditionally been used to heat all processes in the petrochemical industry does not mean that the technology is untested. In fact, it’s far from it. Field-proven power switching devices have been used for low voltage electric process heaters and electric medium voltage motors across industries for years, and the ability to control voltage is well established. Programmable logic controllers (PLCs) bring heaters online in ways that do not cause problems for other devices connected to the same power source. The heater and controller are part of one closed-loop system, which streamlines integration and yields more control over the entire system. This technology’s tried and true nature in other applications reduces the risk for petrochemical process heating. New tech driving the energy transition It’s worth considering some of the technologies that make electric process heaters and heat exchangers promising candidates for replacing traditional heaters. Heaters with Continuous Helical Flow (CHF) technology are playing a critical role in making large electric process heaters more robust and economical. CHF ensures the baffles with the heater do not exist as discrete elements, but rather as a single continuous spiral winding around the interior of the shell side of the heater. This forces the flow to be rotational and helical, resulting in an even better heat transfer coefficient per unit pressure drop. This means heaters with CHF technology do not have dead zones or areas with insufficient flow. As there are no disruptions to flow, fewer hotspots can develop, subsequently reducing fouling rates. For example, a single removable Watlow HELIMAX heat exchanger bundle is said by the manufacturer to be able to supply up to five megawatts of power duty range, even with a smaller footprint, than fuelbased heat exchangers. Combine this efficiency with the reduced need for maintenance to address coking, and you have a product that increases productivity even as it contributes to decarbonisation efforts. Furthermore, it’s crucial to have fast, reliable control systems for all larger, modern heat exchangers, especially in petroleum processing, where errors can be extremely costly. Engineers are now beginning to realize two things. Firstly, there are far more opportunities to use electric process heating systems with far fewer size constraints than energy and environmental engineers previously imagined and secondly, the control of these megawatt size heating systems is demonstrated with precise control of process and skin temperatures. The industry must break down barriers towards energy transition to provide clean, efficient and reliable ways to electrify processes traditionally heated with fossil fuels. Working with a reliable partner to electrify process heating systems is one of the easiest ways to progress towards climate action goals without interrupting productivity or profitability. Talking Industry CALL FOR FUTURE PANELISTS for our online panel discussions Contact us at Drives & Controls for more information: Andy Wylie 01732 370341 andy.wylie@dfamedia.co.uk | Damien Oxlee 01732 370342 damien.oxlee@dfamedia.co.uk
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