Application note

Delayed Coker Unit

Ultrasonic flow meters provide a safer and more reliable flow measurement
on heavy residue furnace feed lines.
Benefits:• No pressure drop, no risk ofclogging• No drift over time, no need to
re-calibrate• Transducer replacement underprocess conditions with no riskof product leakage, reduced
safety hazards• Triple redundancy to increase
the operation level of safety• Improve furnace feed reliability
leading less downtime andproduct yield increase• Reduce maintenance cost andexposure time in the unit

Summary
As for every critical safety measurement on
the furnace feed lines in Delayed Cokers,
operators must have a highly reliable,
reproducible/repeatable and safe flow
measurement. It’s quite common to have
one transmitter connected to the Digital
Control System, and 2 or 3 connected to theEmergency Shut Down System with a voting
logic providing a redundancy like 1 out of 2or 2 out of 3 down, from where an action istaken from the ESD. That is typically done
at low flow since too low flow may lead toinsufficient feed into the furnace leading to high risks of blast.

ChallengeA Refinery in Texas used Wedge Flowmeters for this purpose. This customer faced
serious issues with these flowmeters, frequent unit trip caused by unreliable/not
repeatable measurement due to a significant deviation on readings between
the DP cells connected to the Wedge flowmeter. These readings deviations werederived from coke build up on the DP seals. To mitigate this issue, this facility had topurge these seals as frequent as 5 times a week, which lead to high maintenancecost, significant downtime, less finished product yield, and a huge safety concern.
Indeed, when performing the impulse line purge operation on the DP cells there
is a high risk of high temperature distillate leakage at the connected manifold,that when in contact with the atmosphere can ignite creating significant risks topersonnel and assets.

Solution
The recommended solution for this application was thePanametrics ultrasonic flowmeter Panaflow HT which is SIL
certified and specifically designed for extreme high/low
temperature liquid flow applications. However, customer
wanted us to match the face to face dimension of existing
wedge meters and provide a triple redundancy ultrasonicflow measurement system which represented anadditional challenge.
The existing face to face dimension was shorter than thestandard length of our Panaflow HT redundant system. To
address this challenge, we designed custom flowmeters toaccommodate three acoustical paths with three pairs ofBWT transducers and three independent XMT868i electronics
which operate with a 2 out of 3 safety system control logic.
Because of the of the measurement criticality, our customer
decided to first try one meter out of the 8 furnace feed lines.
After few months of reliable, accurate and safe operations,they decided to fit all feed lines with the same meters andthey are now in operations for more than 2 years.
Since then, they have also replaced other heavy residue flow
measurement points using Panametrics ultrasonicmeters successfully.

Panametrics, a Baker Hughes Business, provides solutions in
the toughest applications and environments for moisture,oxygen, liquid and gas flow measurement. Experts in flaremanagement, Panametrics technology also reduces flareemissions and optimizes performance.
With a reach that extends across the globe, Panametrics’critical measurement solutions and flare emissions
management are enabling customers to drive efficiency
and achieve carbon reduction targets across criticalindustries including: Oil & Gas; Energy; Healthcare; Water andWastewater; Chemical Processing; Food & Beverage andmany others.
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BHCS34571		

(03/2023)

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