Cleaner Fuels and Operating Cost Savings

Refiners and gas processors have operated tail gas treatment units (TGTUs) for more than thirty years to curtail the emissions of various sulfur conmpounds, and to comply with air quality regulations.TGTUs function as air emission controls in facilities handling sour feeds, and their performance is generally mandated by individual air permits in the U.S. With today's increasingly sour feedstocks, and the challanges of producing cleaner fuels, the sulfur recovery unit (SRU), and the integrated TGTU are key elements to environmental compliance and maintaining good relations with the surrounding community

Despite the important role of the TGTU, this unit may be ignored as a contributor to plant profit, since it generates no direct revenue. Astute plant operators are realizing that replacing an older, less efficient process with modern, more reliable technology offers potential annual operating cost savings of millions of dollars. Justifying the capital outlay required for such a conversion project is totally dependent on minimizing both the capital cost and the operating cost of the replacement process.

The ExxonMobil FLEXSORB® process has demonstrated lower operating costs than competing commercial-scale TGTU processes, and represents the optimum choice for replacing outdated systems currently operating in refineries and natural gas processing plants...

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Harris Group Inc. provides multi-discipline engineering to five market sectors: energy, ethanol & biomass, forest industries, industrial manufacturing, and microelectronics. Its specialty services include financial consulting, process development and systems integration. Harris Group has nine offices in the U.S. and a sister company, AO Harris Group International, in St. Petersburg, Russia. For more information, call 1-800-488-7410 or visit www.harrisgroup.com.