As part of their petroleum conversion operations, many refineries contain coker units. Coking is the final means of converting the heaviest products of atmospheric and vacuum distillation. Feed is heated and cracked into light gases, gasoline blendstocks, distillates, and gas oil.
Coker units contain many complex components that need monitoring. Level applications for delayed and continuous (contact or fluid) coking include the fractionator, light gas oil stripper, steam, condensate, blowdown and settling drums, and vent gas knockout drums. coker units
Magnetrol® has produced an applications brochure for the petroleum refining industry detailing level measurement challenges and solutions for each step of the refining process. This blog post is part of an occasional series exploring each application in detail.
Level Measurement Challenges and Considerations
The equipment that makes up coker units presents many measurement challenges. Process conditions that level instrumentation must contend with include high temperatures, high pressures, foaming, and steam. Level instruments must be able to return reliable measurements despite these intense conditions. In addition, an interface level gauge in drums that are susceptible to foaming will help avoid foam-over and increase coke drum output.
Level Measurement Solutions
MAGNETROL has produced level measurement solutions for the difficult process conditions found in coker units:
For point level:
Series 3 float-actuated external cage level switch or B40 float-actuated level switch
For continuous level:
E3 Modulevel® displacer-actuated transmitter or Eclipse® Model 706 guided wave radar transmitter
For visual indication:
Atlas or Aurora® magnetic level indicators can be supplied with switches or transmitters
