What are others experience on improvement of refinery Claus units reliability, on the aspects concerning Amine acid gas and Sour Water gas feeds quality, catalyst activitie, plugging, corrosion, concrete damages, main burner NH3 destruction, insulation and steam tracers. Because of environment protection a discussion on this subject should be useful for all of us. Best Regards Luis Marques

Hi David Hendrix I understand that there are lots of questions in my posting. I already am a registered member in your site with the nick name of Lusitano but when I try to login to the forums it doesn’t work. Long time ago I was a registered member since Nov-25-02 on your forums with the nickname of Lima with another e-mail address but meanwhile I forgot the password and the attempts to login haven’t been successful. Any way thank you very much for you invitation. Happy Easter holiday and Best Regards Luis Marques

We also have 3 Claus units which are fed from process Amine Acid Gas (AAG) units and Acid Gas from the process Sour Water Systems (AGSWS) units. Our problems with Claus units are mainly due to plugging and as consequence under deposit corrosion. Process wise Plugging problems could be explained by difficult in maintaining NH3 of Amine refluxed waters bellow 1% so that we might have less than 1000 ppm of NH3 in acid gas flow. By the other side bad thermal insulation and incorrect lines steam jacking are also contributors for the plugging situation Seal pots from condensed sulphur are a big problem during start-ups because of difficulties in turning liquid the solid sulphur inside the jacket pipes. Our main corrosion problems are related with under deposit corrosion in Sulphur condenser tubes, waste boiler tubes and incinerator waste tail gas boiler tubes. The main burner of the reaction heater is sometimes very difficult to light on creating unit instability and frequent shut down. In what part of the unit did you have up grade your Claus unit metallurgy? Do you have demisters in AAG and AGSWS Claus unit feed drums? What did you use as combustible in your Claus Unit? Best regards Luis Marques