A steam reformer, with a combustion chamber, catalyst tubes arranged in several rows, with burners for heating the catalyst tubes, with feed conduits each for supplying the catalyst tubes with educt gas and the burners with air and fuel gas, with collecting conduits for discharging the product gas, with channels for discharging the burner waste gases from the combustion chamber, wherein the ceilings of the channels each are formed by the bottom or the ceiling of the combustion chamber, and wherein the channels for discharging the burner waste gases are designed such that the flow velocity of the burner waste gases is constant along the entire length of the channels, as seen vertically to the catalyst tubes.

The present invention relates to modifying a reformer tube to facilitate regular tube inspections to assess the service life and subsequently predict its remaining life accurately.

The present invention relates to reactor tubes packed with a catalyst system employed to deliberately bias process gas flow toward the hot tube segment and away from the cold segment in order to reduce the circumferential tube temperature variation.

An apparatus for heating a process fluid is presented. The apparatus is for improving the foot-print of a fired heater and to reduce the fired heater volume. The apparatus includes a W-shaped process coil to provide for a smaller single-cell fired heater, and a fired heater with a lower profile, providing flexibility in positioning relative to downstream reactors.

A furnace for performing an endothermic process, comprising tubes containing a catalyst for converting a gaseous feed, wherein tubes are positioned in rows inside the furnace, wherein burners are mounted between the tubes and between the tubes and the furnace walls parallel to the tubes rows, and wherein the burners rows and the tubes rows are ended by end walls and are divided into sections with, on each row of tubes, the distance from a wall end tube to the end wall being T2W, the distance between two adjacent inner tubes in a section being T2T, and the distance between two symmetry end tubes of two adjacent sections being T2S, wherein the tubes in the rows are arranged in such a way that the ratios T2T/T2W and T2T/T2S are greater than 0.5 and smaller than 2 thus limiting the differences in the heat transfer to the outer tubes (wall end tubes and symmetry end tubes) with respect to the inner tubes and reducing the temperature difference between outer tubes and inner tubes.

The present invention relates to modifying a reformer tube to facilitate regular tube inspections to assess the service life and subsequently predict its remaining life accurately.

Reactive diluent fluid (22) is introduced into a stream of synthesis gas (or syngas) produced in a heat-generating unit such as a partial oxidation (POX) reactor (12) to cool the syngas and form a mixture of cooled syngas and reactive diluent fluid. Carbon dioxide and/or carbon components and/or hydrogen in the mixture of cooled syngas and reactive diluent fluid is reacted (26) with at least a portion of the reactive diluent fluid in the mixture to produce carbon monoxide-enriched and/or solid carbon depleted syngas which is fed into a secondary reformer unit (30) such as an enhanced heat transfer reformer in a heat exchange reformer process. An advantage of the invention is that problems with the mechanical integrity of the secondary unit arising from the high temperature of the syngas from the heat-generating unit are avoided.

Process and apparatus for producing a hydrogen-containing product by steam-hydrocarbon reforming of multiple hydrocarbon feedstocks in a production facility utilizing a prereformer in addition to the primary reformer. The temperature of the reactant mixture introduced into the prereformer is controlled depending on the composition of the reactant mixture fed to the prereformer.

The invention relates to a pipe for thermal cracking of hydrocarbons in the presence of steam, in which the feed mixture is guided through externally heated pipes, wherein the pipe extends along a longitudinal axis and has a number N.sub.T of grooves that have been introduced into the inner surface of the pipe and extend in a helix around the longitudinal axis along the inner surface, the inner surface into which the grooves have been introduced, in a cross section at right angles to the longitudinal axis, has a diameter Di and a radius r.sub.1=Di/2, the grooves in the cross section at right angles to the longitudinal axis, in their groove base, each have the form of a circular arc and the circular arc has a radius r.sub.2, and
the grooves each have a groove depth TT which, in the cross section at right angles to the longitudinal axis, corresponds in each case to the smallest distance between the circle having the diameter Di on which the inner surface lies and the center of which lies on the longitudinal axis, and the furthest removed point of the groove base of the grooves from the longitudinal axis.

A furnace for performing an endothermic process, comprising tubes containing catalyst for converting gaseous feed, wherein tubes are positioned inside the furnace in rows parallel to refractory walls along X axis, wherein burners are mounted either to the furnace floor or to the furnace ceiling, inner burners being mounted in rows between the rows of tubes and outer burners being mounted in rows between tubes rows and the wall along X axis, and close to said wall along X axis, wherein the outer burners are positioned such that the distance b2w between the outer burner and the wall along X axis is smaller than or equal to equivalent burner nozzle diameter b of said outer burner (b2w /b1).