Green’s design & manufacturing skills combined in innovative waste heat recovery solution

Yuhuang Chemical Inc (YCI) is constructing a plant on a 1,300-acre site on the banks of the Mississippi river in Louisiana, US that will convert 146,000 MMBTU per day of natural gas into 4,950 metric tons per day of methanol for delivery to both domestic and overseas markets that is scheduled to be online in late 2019.

Amec Foster Wheeler is providing EPC services on this large project and commissioned Green’s to design and manufacture an external economiser to capture waste heat from the plant’s 263 t/hr auxiliary boiler.  The waste heat will be used to preheat boiler water, which will then be turned into steam to be used in the production of methanol, cutting energy usage and costs.

Green’s design team evaluated whether H fin or helical fin heating surfaces for the economiser would be best and determined that H fin offered both the best technical solution and most cost-effective option.

STAAD.pro software was used for the structural analysis of the casing in 16Mo3 alloy steel to optimise the structure and facilitate its manufacture.

A further challenge that had to be overcome through collaboration between Green’s factory and design teams was the requirement for the economiser at this plant to be fitted in a horizontal gas duct rather than the more usual vertical installation. This was successfully accommodated in the structure design and fabrication methods.

Green’s managing director Matthew Crewe says:

“This was a challenging project that required use of a range of our design team’s in-house and industry standard software systems, as well as an innovative approach from our manufacturing team to ensure that all of Yuhuang Chemical Inc’s demands for functionality and performance are met.”