absorber stripper vents failure.

We have experienced occasional fires at our Catacarb absorber and stripper vents at different times. If anyone has any information regarding this, I would like to know:

1. What protection means are provided to avoid fire.
2. What sort of experience have other plants had regarding vent fires?
3. Possible causes for fires.
4. Any chance of backfiring in the vent with no air injection inside vent (only steam).

Regards, Mahboob


Hi, Mahboob:

We inject steam(38kg/cm2) to the vent stack during start up or shut down time. I think your system also has this kind of protection and the steam protection is the best way to prevent vent firing. The other way is installing a static electricity removal ring inside the vent stack. Since we do not have this protection, I'm not able to give you apecific details about this.

Thanks, Jaehyuk, Im