The FCC heat recovery project carried out by AITESA was a turnkey supply job (engineering, design, manufacturing, supply and installation) in a Spanish refinery located in San Roque, Cadiz, Spain.

The objective was to improve the annual efficiency and availability of the boiler.

The new boiler replaces and improves upon the existing one which had multiple problems resulting in low efficiency and low annual availability.

This boiler has a generating capacity of 32 ton/h of superheated steam at 430ºC and 45 barg, which is about 25 MW thermal power. The boiler type is water-tube (WHRG), vertical upward hot gas flow, one pressure level and forced circulation. The turnkey project included dismantling of the existing boiler, the supply of all the new boiler sections (economizer, vaporizer and superheater), the instrumentation for monitoring and operation, the civil works, the necessary support structure and access, the complete mechanical assembly, the electrical and instrumentation installation and all signal and power cables.

Following the commissioning of the new recovery boiler, the benefits obtained come from three areas.

• An operational benefit, since the new boiler represents a significant increase in availability with respect to the previous one, which had recurrent problems that forced it to be taken out of service, with the loss of steam generation and an increase in direct emissions to the atmosphere.
• Another benefit in production costs is that the boiler has a much higher efficiency, which has a positive impact on the reduction of operating costs in the generation of steam required by the plant.
• And finally an environmental benefit, since the new boiler manages to reduce the emission temperature of gases from the FCC unit, and on the other hand a reduction in the emission of combustion gases by not requiring steam generation through the use of fossil fuels.