Petroleum refiners will need to comply with new US Environmental Protection Agency flare stack combustion rules that will include additional monitoring and analysis requirements, by January 2019, making it necessary for operators to quickly and accurately determine the heat values of flare stack gases.
Refiners are vetting various technologies for analyzing and monitoring flare stack gases to narrow the field of applicable and reliable technologies ahead of that deadline. Among them is mass spectrometry as utilized by the ProMaxion quadrupole process mass spectrometer from AMETEK Process Instruments.
The ProMaxion had the speed and specificity necessary to calculate the appropriate amount of make-up gas for complete combustion. The ProMaxion was set up to monitor and quantify 16 components in the flare gas stream, including H2, N2, methane, ethane, propane, n-butane, i-butane and pentanes among others. By modifying the standard process mass spectrometry method of analysis slightly, the ProMaxion provided fast and accurate BTU content measurement even when confronted with a widely changing flare gas stream.
The ProMaxion used ASTM method D 2650-04 (Standard Test Method for Chemical Composition of Gases by Mass Spectrometry) to calculate the concentrations of individual gas components. The ProMaxion’s modular design and self-diagnostic capabilities ensure ease of maintenance. The instrument is housed in a stainless steel enclosure (general purpose or C1, D2 area classification.
