Refining

Process heating helps refineries heat, vaporize, separate, convert, treat, and condition hydrocarbons into finished and intermediate products. Fired heaters, reboilers, hot oil heaters, and other fired equipment support major refinery units such as crude distillation, vacuum distillation, hydrotreating, reforming, conversion, utilities, and emissions-control systems. 

Burner management systems are used on refinery fired equipment that needs controlled ignition, purge sequencing, permissive checks, flame supervision, and safe shutdown. In refineries, this can include process heaters, crude charge heaters, vacuum heaters, hydrotreater and hydrocracker charge heaters, reboilers, thermal oxidizers, combustors, incinerators, and flares.

Refinery fired heaters run inside continuous units, so a trip on a crude or vacuum heater can cut throughput on every unit it feeds. Many refineries specify heater protective systems against API 556, which covers instrumentation, control, and protective systems for gas-fired refinery heaters. A BMS manages purge and ignition, proves pilot and main flame, and shuts fuel off when unsafe conditions are detected.

A BMS sends burner status, alarms, first-out conditions, and event history to the DCS, so the board operator can see why a heater tripped without walking the unit. In one published project, eight API-aligned multi-burner process heaters were moved onto PF3100 controls with Modbus and DCS integration and full data and event logging.

Profire supports refinery fired equipment such as process heaters, API fired heaters, crude charge heaters, vacuum heaters, hydrotreater and hydrocracker charge heaters, reboilers, hot oil heaters, thermal oxidizers, incinerators, combustors, and flares. The right solution depends on the application, burner configuration, fuel train, draft type, flame detection needs, communication requirements, site standards, and project scope.

Yes. The PF3100 platform is built for API heaters and multi-burner, multi-pilot appliances, in natural or forced draft, including fuel/air ratio control. PF3100 is certified to IEC 61508 and SIL 2 Capable. Each project is still reviewed against site engineering, DCS, SIS, and documentation requirements, since Profire supplies burner management and combustion control, not the site’s overall safety-system design. More on combustion control in refinery heaters.

PF3100 is the usual fit for API process heaters, multi-burner and multi-pilot heaters, and anything needing fuel/air ratio control. Not every refinery appliance needs that scale. Single and dual burner reboilers, hot oil heaters, tank heaters, and utility equipment often fit PF2200, which covers forced draft and adds diagnostics and data logging. Compare the controllers side by side.

Profire supports refinery fired equipment such as API fired heaters and process heaters, crude charge and vacuum heaters, hydrotreater and hydrocracker charge heaters, catalytic reforming and hydrogen plant heaters, amine reboilers, hot oil heaters, thermal oxidizers, incinerators, combustors, and flares. On refinery heaters, scope usually turns on burner and pilot count, flame detection method, and how the BMS hands off to the DCS and any SIS.

Refineries should consider burner and pilot configuration, existing field devices and flame scanners, DCS and SIS interfaces, shutdown logic, fuel train scope, documentation, outage timing, operator training, and long-term supportability. Outage timing usually drives the rest. The more of the scope that can be configured, wired, and tested before the turnaround, the shorter the window the heater needs to be down.

Refinery BMS submittals typically include a cause-and-effect matrix, I/O list, wiring diagrams, fuel train P&ID, and the configured setpoint and permissive list, with factory and site acceptance test records at turnover. Profire’s engineering and design team works with the project on that package, and the exact scope is confirmed during application review.