The Importance of an Efficient Industrial Flaring System
Gas flaring is one of many industrial processes to help eliminate unwanted gases by combustion; it’s a safety feature necessary to prevent explosions, minimize risks, and maximize production.
Let’s dive into what gas flaring is, why you should be leveraging this process, when to use it, and how to maximize this process.
What Is Gas Flaring?
Gas flaring is a common practice among industrial plants and oil fields that emits unwanted gases into the air through combustion.
Gas builds up as a byproduct of oil and gas production. Most industrial sites will try to repurpose this gas before disposing of it. Some ways that gas can be repurposed are by using it in furnaces and feeding it to power plants to produce steam or power.
When there is too much gas or unusable gas due to technical difficulties, it must be emitted through gas flaring.
Gas flaring is a process that includes a controlled method of burning natural gas waste. It shouldn’t be used often because the emissions can hurt the environment and human health; gas flaring is more of a safety feature than a regular activity at industrial plants.
The gas is emitted through a torch-like structure called a boom or stack. The stacks are 60 meters high and burn off the gas at high temperatures.
A flaring system is made up of a flashback seal drum, the liquid knockout drum, and the flashback prevention unit, which are all connected by various flare lines.
The flare size, color, and brightness depend on the type of gas that emits from the flare stack.
When To Perform Gas Flaring
Gas flaring can negatively affect the environment and human health, so it should be used sparingly and only during certain times.
During Production Testing; After Drilling
It’s important to test to determine the flow, composition, and pressure of the gas or oil you are working with. On-site flaring can last days or even weeks until the pressures and flows of the gases and other liquids are stable.
Safety During Emergencies and Maintenance
For gas and oil processing plants, flaring is extremely important for plant safety.
If pipes or valves become over-pressurized, special valves allow the gas to automatically release and burn through flare stacks.
Managing Gases During Processing and Compression
Flaring systems are used to remove waste that can’t be captured for further processing.
Flare systems could be present at compensator stations to burn vapors that can’t be controlled with the usual vapor recovery process.
Why You Should Have an Industrial Gas-Flaring Process
Gas flaring is a safety measure that helps relieve pressure by venting large amounts of active gas to prevent explosions at your plant.
Industrial plants also incorporate gas flaring for product waste removal from the other areas of chemical processing.
One of the last reasons for gas flaring is to safely remove volatile organic compounds that bring potential health risks to people.
It’s better to capture gases from compressors, wells, and processing sectors from an environmentally friendly perspective, but this can’t always be done. If gas byproducts can’t be captured, it’s better to burn the gas than release it directly into the atmosphere.
How To Increase Your Gas-Flaring Efficiency
To get your flare system operating at its full potential, you have to make sure your system is constantly ready to operate.
The downtime that comes with working on your flaring system will slow down the operations of your whole plant.
To reduce the downtime and maintenance of your flare lines, it’s important to have an established flare-line cleaning process.
Instead of using traditional methods that put humans in harm’s way, leverage robotic flare-line cleaning solutions.
Traditional cleaning methods throw humans into unsafe environments, increase downtime, and ultimately slow down your plant’s ability to produce. By leveraging robotic flare line cleaning processes, you can maximize your plant’s output.
Robots are being leveraged in many ways to improve worker safety at industrial plants.
