Unlike a chemical steam clean of your car or perhaps when we clean our living room carpets, conducting a chemical clean of refinery equipment is a complicated endeavor, yet has the same purpose. “Chemical cleans” are conducted one to two times a year, on average, during a Turnaround.
What is a Turnaround? A major, planned project during which our highly-skilled personnel perform extensive maintenance events – to inspect, clean, and conduct important maintenance on refinery equipment. Turnarounds require process units to be shut down and opened for inspection and work that supports safe, reliable, continuous operation to support our production of the cleaner-burning transportation fuels our society relies on.
What exactly is a chemical clean, and why is it necessary? A “chem clean” is conducted to remove residual material from process unit vessels and piping. This is necessary so engineers and maintenance workers can safely go inside equipment to make repairs, conduct API (American Petroleum Institute) required inspections, and diagnose operational issues.
In preparation for a chem clean, process unit vessels are de-inventoried of product and isolated, so that temporary connections can be made. The main connections are “injection points” for introducing cleaning chemicals using steam and “drain points” for emptying those cleaning agents.