On-line viscometer improves heater efficiencies

Huntsman Petrochemicals UK on Teeside has improved the efficiency of its boilers and process heaters with the installation of an on-line digital viscometer from Solartron Mobrey

Huntsman Petrochemicals UK on Teeside, producer of one million tonnes of aromatics per year for use in the plastics industry, has improved the efficiency of its boilers and process heaters with the installation of an on-line digital viscometer from Solartron Mobrey.

The new system maintains optimum combustion through closed loop control of the fuel oil heating.

In trials, Huntsman found the Solartron Mobrey instrument to be the only technology capable of a reliable on-line kinematic viscosity measurement.

Simon Mann, Reliability Engineer at Huntsman explains: "We have installed the new digital viscometer on all three of the fuel oil feed stock lines, providing closed loop control of heating.

For the first time, we are able to control the viscosity of the fuel oil on-line.

Not only have we been able to do away with laborious laboratory measurements, but the efficiency of the combustion is improved, the cleaning requirement is reduced and there is less risk of damage to the tubes by flame impingement." Viscosity of the fuel oil is critical to optimisation of combustion in the boilers and heaters.

If it is too thick, combustion is inefficient and there is a greater build up of soot which has to be cleaned out regularly.

If it is too thin, the flame is large and ragged, and there is risk of flame impingement on the tubes which can damage them.

Before selecting the Solartron Mobrey technology, Huntsman trialled other on-line viscometers.

"One of the key issues with other technologies is that they assume constant density and therefore measure only dynamic viscosity.

It is kinematic viscosity which is critical to the burner and the two can vary significantly," says Simon Mann.

Solartron Mobrey's digital process viscosity analyser is based on a unique tuning fork design.

The resonant frequency is used to measure density, and a bandwidth measurement at the 3dB point gives dynamic viscosity.

These two measurements together are used to calculate kinematic viscosity.

Analysis and control functions are provided by a.

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