Filtration specialist Porvair has supplied its sintered metal powder Triple Element Filters (TEFs) to PetroSA, South Africa’s national oil company.
The filters form part of what the company says is the world’s third largest gas-to-liquid (GTL) refinery, located in Mossel Bay.
The scope of supply includes 2.4 m long TEF assemblies, made in the UK, as well as sintered metal mesh fuse assemblies made in tandem at the filtration specialist’s US factory in Ashland, Virginia. The TEFs and mesh fuses are fitted into tubesheets and installed into five vessels, manufactured and supplied locally.
The complete vessels have been shipped to the PetroSA refinery and used to help clean up catalyst fines – very small particles used in the fluid catalytic cracking process (FCC) of most large, modern oil refineries and in the hydrogen process stream.
Performance level
The vessels are located above the catalyst reduction reactor (CRR), enabling the TEF assemblies to be cleanable in situ and operating in a cyclic back flush operation to remove the catalyst cake from the filter surface of the TEFs. The disengaged catalyst then falls into the CRR. As a consequence, the TEFs are able to operate for a prolonged period in an aggressive environment, only periodically requiring to be removed and chemically cleaned before then being re-installed and operating once more at the same high performance level.
This story is reprinted from material from Porvair, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.
