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We have heard in many technical forums about ‘Unit Quench Factor’.
We would like to know more on this term, monitoring experiences, correct technical formula & accuracy of this term in predicting stress build-up in coke drums.
What are other ways for monitoring stress on coke drums? Are there any standard references/values for water quenching, steam quenching & vapour heating - rates and Deg C/Min?
 
Answers
29/04/2015 A: Prabhakar Reddy, Suncor Energy, Inc., preddy@suncor.com
Unit Quench Factor is the ratio of water-quenching time in minutes to the coke yield per drum in tons. So if you have 500 tons of coke in your coke drum and your quench time is say 3 hr. Then UQF = 3 x 60 min/ 500 = 0.36. iF UQF is greater than 0.50 the bulging in coke drums is minimal, when the UQF is greater than
0.80 the bulging is all but non-existent.