Cobb

Ive worked in refineries all around the US and the flares are an emergency bypass system set up for any shut-downs of start-up while the systems are being started etc. Anything they make can be vented to these emergency device if there is a pump or motor malfunction. It could be asphalt if they make it, or motor oil or heavy fuel oil or gasoline, butane, hydrogen et al. They normally only have a pilot light to touch off during normal operations. The flares also have steam injectors at the top to keep the soot and smoke at a minimum unless there is an emergency or start up situation.

You cant have these process flows just stop if a pump or motor goes out. Crude oil in a refinery is under pressure and heated within the piping to from 300 to 900 degrees. It would flash on contact with air and would present a very dangeroous situation if it was not flared and was forced to sit in a pipeline not moving it could build up pressure blow the pipe apart and then the whoe shebang would take off. Almost every pipe you see in a refinery is full of flammable product.

I have seen flares with so much coming out the top that the flare flame front was within 10 feet of the ground with very heavy product . A tad warm also.

EVery plant I have been in has cameras trained on the flares and are watched continually for smoke emissions etc. They have certain numbers of days they can provide smoke unless its a start up or shut down. Most refineries do not do a full shut down but once every 2-3 years.

Thanks Bill. I suspected as much regarding that you could flare any tank or pipe in the plant.

When I first worked in Whittier for a division of Olin, I helped work a couple pumps and valves myself. It was fascinating to me that the equipment was so expensive - I used to sit for hours reading the equipment catalogs (mostly while my FORTRAN programs were compiling). I also read a lot of OSHA and DOT manuals. My point is that I'm aware that there is always a reason for something to be in a pipe or in a tank or a reactor at a particular time, pressure and heat. So when something is flared, it's no accident. Somebody knows what's going up.

I sent of a letter to the AQMD to see if refineries are required to notify when they have a flare. Clearly if they were venting or flaring something significantly toxic, they'd have a responsibility. I have no reason to believe that Mobil would be so stupid that they would release a couple tons of chlorine or something. But I do believe that if they were over their SO2 limit for the month and some unusual situation came up where they made the decision to flare that nobody's going to be on the phone tattling.

If the rule in Southern Cal is as you characterize, smoky days vs non-smoky days then they have a lot of wiggle room to flare up whatever.

I was in Houston last summer and there was a fire and explosion at one of the plants that made STP and it was all over the news. I started looking into compliance issues, which are rather massive over at the ship channel there. The city has but one inspector to handle the monitoring for several refineries and plants. This guy was run ragged. So I'm trying to find out what the regime is here.

One of my interests is the ability to view statistical data over the web. It's what I do for a living.