PLANTSERV Success Story - Emergency Thermal Oxidizer Repair

The challenge: A 30-year-old thermal oxidizer critical to a section of a petrochemical plant’s operation in hazardous waste destruction experienced a burner component failure, which resulted in a partial plant outage.

PLANTSERV was contacted for support. Our service technician’s first action was to identify the failed components and determine those that could be repaired or required replacement – a crucial diagnosis as time was of the essence, since repair could be performed faster than replacing the entire assembly.

Objective: Get the plant fully operational as soon as possible.

Solution: Due to lead time for fabrication of a complete assembly, repair and replacement of failed components was preferred. Partnering with the plant operator, Linde selected an emergency work fabricator and a refractory company to repair the damaged burner inner and outer shells and schedule the work. During project execution, it was discovered that materials needed for one subcomponents required a longer lead time than anticipated. Linde engineers quickly developed an alternative design with no modification to the process function that could be fabricated within the initial planned timeframe. Engineering and fabrication work was completed in 17 calendar days from receipt of the order.

Result: The short project turnaround time minimized the economic impact of the outage and restored the plant  to normal operating mode.