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Can anyone share experience of putting Refinery Off Gas as Gas Turbine Feed? Advantages, Problems, Modifications required if any?
 
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17/09/2013 A: Eric Vetters, ProCorr Consulting Services, ewvetters@yahoo.com
In one refinery cogen facility, we saw a lot of fouling on the turbines from burning predominantly refinery fuel gas. There were a lot more heavy components and olefins present in the gas in reality than had assumed when fuel specs were given to the turbine manufacturer. The use of refinery gas significantly shortened the life of the cogen facility. When we replaced the cogen, we elected to only burn refinery gas in the HRSG and the auxilliary boiler that was being built in order to improve GT performance. The downside to doing this is that you have less flexibility on fuel balance which can be problematic in a complex cracking/coking refinery where the supply of refinery fuel gas is close to matching total refinery fuel demand.