Advances in Chemical Engineering and Science, 2020, 10, 297-321 https://www.scirp.org/journal/aces ISSN Online: 2160-0406 ISSN Print: 2160-0392 DOI: 10.4236/aces.2020.104019 Sep. 4, 2020 297 Advances in Chemical Engineering and Science Gas Flare Design Debottlenecking Using Pinch Analysis Lawrence Leelabari Pemii, Kenneth Kekpugile Dagde, ThankGod Oweifa Goodhead Department of Chemical/Petrochemical Engineering, Rivers State University, Nkpolu-Oroworukwo, Nigeria Abstract Gas flaring is concerned with the combustion of lighter ends of hydrocarbon mostly produced in association with crude oil. Flare networks are designed to handle the gas volume required to be flared. Most times, this flare networks are in close proximity but still have independent flare stacks, increasing risk to environment and cost on infrastructures. There is a need to integrate the flare networks in facilities within same area and through the application of Pinch Analysis concept, the resultant flare network can be optimized to give a system having optimal tail and header pipe sizes that will reduce cost and impact on environment. In the light of the foregoing, the concept of pinch analysis was used in debottlenecking integrated gas flare networks from a flow station and a refinery in close proximity. Both flare networks were integrated and the resultant gas flare network was optimized to obtain the optimum pipe header and tail pipe sizes with the capacity to withstand the inventory from both facilities and satisfy the set constraints such as Mach number, noise, RhoV 2 and backpressure. Mach number was set at 0.7 for tail pipes and 0.5 for header pipes, noise limit was not to exceed 80 dB upstream and 115 dB downstream the sources, RhoV 2 was limited to 6000 kg/m/s 2 and the back pressure requirement was source dependent respectively. The fire case scenario was considered, as it is the worst-case scenario in the studies. When pinch analysis was applied in debottlenecking the combined gas flare network, it gave smaller tail and header pipe sizes which is more economical. A 20% decrease in pipe sizes was recorded at the end of the study. Keywords Gas Flaring, Pinch Analysis, Debottlenecking, Aspen FlareNet, Optimization, Header Pipe, Tail Pipe 1. Introduction Gas flaring has to do with the combustion of associated, unwanted or excess How to cite this paper: Pemii, L.L., Dagde, K.K. and Goodhead, T.O. (2020) Gas Flare Design Debottlenecking Using Pinch Analy- sis. Advances in Chemical Engineering and Science, 10, 297-321. https://doi.org/10.4236/aces.2020.104019 Received: May 30, 2020 Accepted: September 1, 2020 Published: September 4, 2020 Copyright © 2020 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access