Overpressure by Design – An Oil and Gas Perspective on Safety for Kraft Digesters, 2023 PEERS Conference

Overpressure protection by system design in lieu of pressure relief devices (PRDs) as a method of pressure vessel overpressure protection has been used in industry for a long time and only relatively recently has it been codified in Section VIII, Division 1, of the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code (ASME Code) [1] as paragraph UG-140. As part of the recent restructuring of the ASME Code, most of the requirements associated with UG-140 are now located in ASME Section XIII, Part 13 [2].

Refiners and chemical companies have been utilizing instrumentation as part of their overpressure protection systems in situations where a PRD is unreliable due to the fouling or plugging nature of the relieving fluid, where the required capacity (i.e., number of relief devices) is unreasonable or where PRDs introduced other dangers due to increased emissions. For example, in the manufacture of paper and other similar processes where slurries and corrosive process streams are encountered, PRDs may not be reliable.

System design has also been used in the Paper & Pulp industry in protection of Kraft digesters. Digesters utilize PRDs as part of the overpressure protection system, but they are not always sized to handle all potential overpressure scenarios. Instrumentation is often used as part of the system design to eliminate some of the overpressure scenarios to reduce the size of the PRDs. Experience shows that not all operators are applying the system design philosophy as intended by the ASME Code. Part of the reason could be due to the fact that there is significant confusion about how it is to be applied.

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