Industrial flaring can have negative impacts on regional air quality and recent studies have shown that flares are often operated at low combustion efficiency, which exacerbates these air quality impacts. This thesis examines industrial flaring with the objectives of (1) assessing the air quality impacts of flares operating at a variety of conditions, (2) examining the extent to which improvements in flare operations could reduce emissions, (3) identifying opportunities for recycling flared gases in fuel gas networks, and (4) identifying opportunities for reducing the generation of flared gases, using the improved control of catalytic cracking operations as a case study.
The work presented in this thesis demonstrates that flares operating at low combustion efficiency can increase localized ambient ozone concentrations by more than 15 ppb under some conditions. The impact of flares on air quality depends most strongly on combustion efficiency, the flow rates to the flares and the chemical composition (photochemical reactivity) of the emissions. Products of incomplete combustion and nitrogen oxides emissions from flaring generally had a smaller impact on air quality than unburned flare gases.
The combustion efficiency at which a flare can operate can be constrained by the flare’s design. In a case study of an air-assisted flare, it was demonstrated that choices in blower configurations could lead to emissions that were orders of magnitude greater or less than those predicted using an assumed combustion efficiency of 98%. Designing flares with air-assist rates that can be finely tuned can significantly reduce emissions. Similarly, flaring can be reduced by integrating sources of waste gases into fuel gas networks. Analyses for a petroleum refinery indicated that this integration can often be accomplished with little net cost by expanding boiler capacities. Finally, flared gases can be reduced at their source. A case study of a fluid catalytic cracking indicated that using better temperature control could significantly minimize flared gases. / text
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/ETD-UT-2012-08-5962 |
| Date | 04 October 2012 |
| Creators | Alfadhli, Fahad Mohammed |
| Source Sets | University of Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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