Feasibility Study of Waste Heat Boiler Application in Isomax Unit of Tehran Refinery

The economics of furnaces in on-site heat generation applications often depends on the effective use of the thermal energy contained in the exhaust gas system, which generally represents considerable amounts of the inlet fuel energy. Most of the waste heat is available in the stack exhaust. The most common use of this heat can be to generate high/low pressure steam for process use or to generate electrical power. To generate steam from flue gases, Waste Heat Boilers (WHBs) are widely used in processes and refineries. They use the energy heating of flue gas with high temperature and high rate to generate steam and reduce fuel consumption and emission characteristics. In this paper, we do the pre-feasibility study of WHB in North Isomax unit of Tehran Refinery in order to find potentials for steam generation from energy recovery of the exhaust flue gases through five existing furnaces. The results show that about 18.5 ton per hour steam with 3.6 years payback can be generated.