Remnants Life Forecast Of Centrifugal Casting Reformer Tube In Service

Using hydrocarbon as raw material and adopting steam reform process to produce synthetic gas and hydrogen play an important role on the sectors of synthetic ammonia, refinery, petrochemical, natural gas chemical, metallurgy. Reformer is the key equipment in the hydrocarbon steam process while radiation reformer tube is the core of the total. Reliability of reformer tube offers basis for stable operation. According to plant operation, carrying out assessment and prediction on remenant life of live reformer tube is not only able to reduce the risk of reformer, avoid accident, but able to ensure expected life of reformer tube, providing basis for updating reformer tube at appropriate time and reducing maintenance cost for optimum profit. Therefore, it is vital to assess the remnants life of live reformer tube.The operation condition for reformer tube is hard to meet, requiring material to be able to prevent attack from oxidation, high temperature and stable texture under high temperature able to resist corrosion of all medium. Short life of reformer tube is a combined results of heating deteriariation, localized heating, flame impingement, fouling inside the tube, bad impurity ingress of tube medium, external corrosion of tube inside, etc. The article herine assess and predict the remenant life on live reformer tube made of HP50 in a certain plant adopting steam reforming process and using natural gas as raw material, based on the major causes leading tofailure of centrifugural reformer tube, such as oxidation from high temperature, high temperature creeping, decarbonization, etc. And the article also raise proposals on operation and maintenance of reformer tube based on assessment, providing positive guideline for replacement of reformer tube.