Cause Analysis and Treatment of Heat Belt in Reformer Tube
In March 2022,a hot zone was found to appear at the upper 3 m of the furnace tube of reformer in a synthetic gas hydrogen production plant of a company,and the hot zone continued to expand.Based on analysis of natural gas components,process steam and desulfurization effect,it is concluded that the hydrocarbon in natural gas exceeds the design range,which leads to the carbon deposition of catalyst and the hot zone in the furnace tube.For this reason,steam carburization was carried out on the reformer catalyst.After carburization,the hot zone of the reformer tube disappeared obviously,and the maximum surface temperature of the reformer tube decreased by about 40 K compared with that before carburization.In order to cope with the weight of natural gas components and prevent the catalyst from accumulating carbon again,the method of increasing the water-carbon ratio of the reformer is adopted after carbon elimination.