Development of methods to monitor the fouling of stripper sheds in fluid cokers

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Fluid Coking is used around the world to upgrade heavy oils from various sources. For example, in Northern Alberta, Syncrude's Fluid Cokers produce over 0.3 Mbbl/day of synthetic crude. Imperial Oil also operates a Fluid Coker at its Sarnia refinery. In fluid cokers, hot coke particles provide the energy required for the thermal cracking of heavy oil. The hot coke is conveyed from a burner to the coker top, flows down the coker where it comes into contact with heavy oil, and flows back to the burner from the coker bottom. Before they exit the coker, the coke flows through a stripper where steam is injected to remove residual oil. However, coke deposits that gradually grow on the surface of the stripper sheds may eventually restrict coke flow, forcing the premature shutdown of the coker.The proposed research aims to develop reliable methods for online monitoring of stripper shed fouling in commercial cokers. This information will allow the industrial operator to maintain ideal operating conditions in a coker, with the right balance between conditions that reduce fouling and conditions that maximize the yield of valuable products. The research objective is to establish measurement techniques that can determine the extent of stripper fouling in commercial cokers using five different approaches. The first two approaches will focus on detecting changes in bed hydrodynamics above the stripper or within the stripper region. The other three approaches will focus on detecting changes in deposit thickness on the sheds, the column wall near the sheds, or dedicated fouling probes.More efficient operation of Canadian fluid cokers will bring substantial economic benefits to Canada. As the economy gradually shifts from fossil fuels, bitumen feeds to fluid cokers will be supplemented with other feeds such as waste plastics, pyrolytic bio-oil, sugars, and off-spec vegetable oil. The proposed research will help adapt cokers to the new feeds, bringing economic and environmental benefits to Canada.