Steam air decoking; burns off carbon, must be controlled or you can melt the pipe. Turbine cutting, must be controlled or you cut and/or expand pipe. I never heard of pigging removing coke : It can remove sludge soft materials.

We currently use steam-air decoke for all coker heaters. We were using spalling on one set of coker heaters but had to stop because of issues with plugging and the possibility of tube rupture. I have not heard of pigging for a coker heater.

Johnny Pellin

We replaced a coker heater and the client wanted pigging facilities. They gave us their contact and we worked with them to understand what they needed and incorporated those design requirements into our piping.

Someone else was asking about this and I dug out the contact but there's no apparently business any more at that web address.

Contact Tulsa heaters or another large fired heater company and ask for their input/reference.

Hey,

we use both steam-air decoking and pigging for our DC furnace.
- Steam-air decoking on a regular basis if skin temperature or pressure drop rise too high
- Pigging in turnarounds to remove remaining coke.

As acceptance criteria you can use that no visible coke film is left.
You can do X-ray before and after pigging to determine coke thickness.

Daniel Breyer
Inspection Engineer

http://lnkd.in/dFcQA-w

Found one Mechanical Decoking(pigging on Fire Heater) Company with many years experience.
Website : www.mun-siong.com