Summary

Fired equipment safety was the topic of the IFRF Topic Oriented Technical Meeting 43 and was held at the Halifax Hall Hotel in Sheffield, UK.

This event marks the first IFRF TOTeM on fired equipment safety and its associated instrumentation and control requirements. TOTeM 43 addressed the best practices and challenges of most of the fired equipment operated in the Oil and Gas Industry, i.e. process heaters, cracking furnaces, industrial boilers, steam methane reformer furnaces and incinerators. It also showed some of the key differences between supervised and unsupervised fired equipment and the approaches taken in various international codes and standards. Above all, it  aimed at sharing the best practices that combine safety and availability at a reasonable cost.

The technical program included:

• 17 presentations from internationally recognized engineers involved in the writing of international standards on instrumentation, controls and safety functions of fired equipment. The presentations addressed a large variety of critical topics and was followed by discussions.
• Four round table discussions providing opportunities to all participants to ask questions, share experiences and define best practices.
• One poster session allowing sponsors to present their services and technologies.
• One wrap-up session summarizing the learnings from this meeting and focusing on the question: “How can IFRF assist in going forward?”.

Jacques Dugué, TOTAL                 Tom Gilmartin, BP

Organizers of TOTeM 43 technical program