Flooding problems severely limited operations for toluene recovery column. A revamp with high-capacity tray and other modifications improved operations and increased throughput
Catalytic reforming can be a profitable operation.
It upgrades naphtha into a reformate stream rich in benzene,
toluene, mixed xylene (BTX) and heavier aromatics. This
reformate may be further refined into petrochemical products.
In this case history, a Gulf Coast refinery suffered
processing difficulties in the aromatics operation. The
toluene recovery column continuously functioned on the edge
of flooding. Consequently, the refiner had to cut the
feedrate to the column and could not use optimization control
strategies already installed.
A detailed investigation identified several root
causes for the toluene column's po
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