Improve Furnace Availability and Control Downtime

In 2008, Ethylene Producer's Committee sponsored a worldwide furnace maintenance survey among ethylene producers.  Out of the 67 respondents, over 70% have furnace limited operation.  Thus, for majority of ethylene producers, an unscheduled outage either affects the plant capacity or requires adjustments to the decoking schedule of remaining furnaces.

This paper is a review of approaches to manage furnace availability by reducing likelihood and duration of an unscheduled downtime.  Design improvements can reduce the possibility of the most frequently reported furnace failures.  The downtime can be kept to a minimum through improved maintainability as well as through better preparedness.  Risk based inspection and monitoring focused on the most common failures can also avert an unscheduled furnace outage.