| Flaring is the most widely used operation in the oil and gas industry to dispose of unwanted gases. It is basically an open air combustion system that keeps harmful gases like methane, ethylene, propylene etc. from entering into the atmosphere by efficiently oxidizing these gases into carbon dioxide and water. However, this seemingly simple process is complicated since flare performance is affected by a wide range of parameters, most of which never remain constant. The most common among these variables are the fuel to air/steam-assist ratios, the heating value of the fuel, jet velocity, and meteorological conditions. As the flare performance decreases, the flares combust less waste gases entering the atmosphere and therefore produce unwanted intermediates and radicals like HCHO, OH, NO, etc. The flare performance is quantified by using two widely used parameters i.e. DRE and CE. In this work, a numerical model is used to simulate industrial scale flare case study. The numerical model is validated with available experimental lab scale and industrial scale flare data. The numerical model is also used to perform a parametric study to observe the effect of these parameters on the flare performance. The simulation results are then used to develop a numerical correlation to predict the optimum flare operating parameters to minimize the emissions. |
