International Flame Research Foundation

Members Conference #16

Boston, June 2009

James G. Seebold

Founding Principal Investigator

Member AFRC, Chevron (Ret)

 

Abstract

The International Flare Consortium (IFC) was formed to address gaps in science with respect to emissions from flares and to establish flaring best practices.  The landmark studies of the 1980s in which the author was intimately involved provided much useful information but did not account for the effect of wind; nor for the effect of fuel composition; nor for the speciated emissions of the ozone-precursor highly reactive volatile organic compounds (HRVOCs); nor for compounds of interest to the health science community such as the class-archetypal carcinogens formaldehyde, benzene and benzo(a)pyrene; nor for the effect on speciated flare emissions of over-steaming for smoke suppression.  The IFC sponsor companies are ExxonMobil, Chevron, British Petroleum, Total, Shell, Saudi Aramco, DuPont, NovaChem, and John Zink.  Under the direction of a Management Committee composed of representatives of each of the IFC sponsor companies, IFC have now completed a program that was intended to address the foregoing deficiencies.  Since the IFC program data is the proprietary property of the IFC sponsor companies, no new data can be presented in this paper.  However, the author has been contracted by the American Petroleum Institute to draft a brochure that will evaluate and explain the IFC results in a way that is understandable to lay persons.  This work will be well on its way toward completion at the time of MC16 Boston.  Thus, in his presentation, the author will be enabled to provide the MC16 attendees with a final progress report and a candid appraisal of the fruits of the International Flare Consortium's labor.

1          Background

The external combustion of hydrocarbon gas mixtures by any means, including flaring, manufactures in the combustion reaction zone and subsequently emits to the atmosphere traces of all possible molecular combinations of the elemental constituents present either in the fuel or in the air including the ozone precursor highly reactive volatile organic compounds (HRVOCs) and the carcinogenic hazardous air pollutants (HAPs).  But because their concentration is ordinarily so low under typical operating conditions, these trace emissions are hard to measure and, in prior related research on hydrocarbon gaseous external diffusional combustion, the expected trace emissions have conclusively been shown to be trace enough that they pose no threat whatsoever to the public health and welfare.

Although in the past it had been treated as such by some researchers, regulators and environmental activists, it was hardly a revelation that burning even methane pure as the drifted snow and in the best possible well-mixed way produces trace emissions of ethylene, propylene, butadiene, and all the other highly reactive volatile organics; trace emissions of formaldehyde, benzene and benzo(a)pyrene, the class-archetypal hazardous air pollutant carcinogens; and trace emissions of all the other hydrocarbon compounds in the gas phase up through 300 molecular weight coronene.  In the Petroleum Environmental Research Forum’s Project 92-19[i] this issue was met head-on.  The landmark measurements showed 1) that all of those emissions are indeed detectable in the stack plume if the investigators are good enough at the detecting and 2) that the trace concentrations under a broad range of operating conditions are trace enough that they pose no threat whatsoever to the public health and welfare.  This knowledge formed a foundation upon which reasonable approaches to the needs of the public for affordable products, secure employment and a clean environment could be structured. Such was the case when industry regulatory advocates, environmental activists and government regulators worked together to give special consideration to gas-fired process heating and steam raising operations in the EPA's Industrial Combustion Coordinated Rulemaking.

Thus it seemed in 2004 that the next opportunity that needed to be taken on was the construction of a foundation of knowledge regarding flaring operations.  Critically needed was resolution of the foregoing issues – and others that might arise – not just by arm-waving and jaw-boning but quantitatively and systematically, comprehensively and unambiguously just was done with respect to process heating and steam raising in the PERF 92-19 Project.  In 2004 we proposed a new flare emissions program that would produce the new knowledge that would resolve the outstanding issues and support sensible flare regulations.[ii]  In due course, the International Flare Consortium came together and the rest, as they say, is history.

2          The International Flare Consortium

The International Flare Consortium (IFC) was formed to eliminate the widely-acknowledged knowledge deficit that today stands in the way of effective flare regulations that rely on measurable operating-parameter-based best practices.  The project was carried out at the Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) CANMET Energy Technology Centre (CETC) Flare Test Facility (FTF), Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.  The program set out to investigate experimentally the effect of wind; the effect of fuel composition; the speciated emissions of the ozone-precursor highly reactive volatile organic compounds (HRVOCs) and other specific compounds of interest to the health science community such as the class-archetypal carcinogens formaldehyde, benzene and benzo(a)pyrene; and the effect on speciated flare emissions of over-steaming for smoke suppression.

Among the technical or regulatory drivers that drove the formation of the International Flare Consortium were:

·         Emissions from flares in the Houston Galveston Area – particularly of the ozone precursor highly reactive volatile organic compounds like butadiene, propylene and ethylene – are currently of great interest to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and to the industrial community.

·         The same can be said of California’s South Coast and Bay Area Air Quality Management Districts and the industrial communities there and elsewhere.

·         The World Bank’s Global Flare Reduction Initiative seeks to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases from flares.

·         If the development of remote “point-and-shoot” techniques to measure flare combustion is delayed, or if remote measurement techniques are found to lack practicality or adequate detection limits or fail blind validation, this program would provide independent and unambiguous resolution of today’s pressing issues.

Although no advantage was taken of the opportunity, the now-completed International Flare Consortium’s research program provided the still much-needed opportunity for blind validation of remote “point-and-shoot” measurement techniques which may develop to monitor flare flames.  It should be noted that to date NO (no) blind validations of ANY (any) remote “point-and-shoot” measurement techniques have been carried out.

The envisioned program deliverables included comprehensive and unambiguous quantification of speciated emissions concentrations from elevated flares as a function of flare gas composition, flare/wind low momentum flux ratio inefficiencies in downstream best practice no flaring purge and pilot only operation and in upstream field flare operation; over-steaming inefficiencies in down-stream operations; and identification of measurable operating parameter based best practices to ensure high efficiency operation of upstream and downstream elevated flares.

3          Program Completion

Testing is now complete.  Four proprietary reports have been issued to the IFC co-sponsor company representatives who comprise the IFR Management Committee:

1.       Online Analysis of Flare Emissions – a thorough exposition of the measurement techniques employed in the program and the quality assurance / quality control safeguards employed.

2.       Emissions from Elevated Flares – A Survey of the Literature – a thoroughly-vetted comprehensive 74-page assessment of pertinent literature.

3.       Flare Test Facility – Equipment and Calculations – a complete description of the test apparatus and the automatic data logging and analysis equipment and software.

4.       IFC Test Data Report – yet to be issued by Natural Resources Canada at the time of writing of this paper.

4          Release of IFC Data and Reports

In accordance with the terms of the Co-Sponsor Agreement, all data and reports produced by the International Flare Consortium are proprietary.  In due course IFC data and reports will be released in accordance with Art. 10 of the IFC Co-Sponsor Agreement; viz.,

ARTICLE 10.0 PUBLIC RELEASES

10.1 The Management Committee shall coordinate all public releases during the term of this Agreement. No public releases, including news releases and advertising, relating to the Project shall be issued by COSPONSOR without the prior written approval of the Management Committee. The Management Committee shall respond to COSPONSOR within thirty (30) days of receipt of such requests.

10.2 Within five (5) years of the date of the full performance of the Agreement, should any Party to this Agreement wish to make any publication relating to the Tasks performed for the Consortium, the Party proposing to publish shall:  (1) make available to all COSPONSORS of the Consortium a copy of the proposed publication, and (2) obtain CANMET’s written consent prior to publication.

10.3 Any technical paper, article or publication written during the period of performance of the Project or in the future relating to the Project, shall give written credit to the Consortium.

10.4 Notwithstanding Article 10.1, COSPONSOR if required may publicly disclose their participation in the Consortium, as well as the Consortium’s scope as set out in Article 2.1 herein.