Revamp increases sulfur-recovery capacity at Corpus Christi's Champlin Refining Co

Champlin Refining Co. recently completed a revamp of the 140 long ton/day sulfur recovery plant at its 160,000-b/d Corpus Christi, Tex., refinery. The refinery needed to quickly and economically gain an incremental 15-20% in sulfur recovery capacity to boost its capability to process higher-sulfur crude oils and/or to accommodate higher conversion operation. Management decided that enrichment of the air supply to the sulfur-recovery units with oxygen would provide the necessary capacity increase. This required replacement of two thermal reactors, replacing the existing burners, repacking the quench lower, adding a quench-water cooler, adding a quench-water circulating pump, installing an oxygen-supply system, and adding additional analysis and control equipment. The revamp resulted in an increase in sulfur recovery capacity of 30 long tons/day, in a timely and cost-effective manner, when the air supply was enriched to 30 vol % total oxygen. The modifications not only enabled the plant to increase to current capacity, but also will permit further plant debottlenecking by additional oxygen enrichment.