Utilizing years of exceptional refinery process experience, TerraChem is the leading specialist in full-unit decontamination. Using a combination of liquid and vapor phase techniques, TerraChem is able to decontaminate the entire refinery unit from the battery limit to flare, including all piping, exchangers, heaters, columns, and vessels in parallel, all ready to handover for maintenance and hot work.

Decontaminating the entire unit, as opposed to individual equipment or circuits, offers obvious safety advantages during maintenance, alongside time savings through minimizing blinding and hydro-jetting requirements. Furthermore, having cleaned all unit piping, the fouling traditionally left in the process piping will not be drawn into the heat exchangers during startup, where it would then provide a seed for fouling to develop on the exchangers. This offers improved operational efficiency on startup and prolonged running time until the next shutdown.

Full Unit Decontamination is a complex process in which TerraChem have exceptional experience, having completed dozens of Crude/Vacuum Units, Delayed Cokers, Hydrotreaters, and FCC’s, including the world’s largest units of its kind. TerraChem will deploy a specialist engineer to integrate with the clients’ operations and T&I teams to plan the decon process in the finest detail to meet clients expectations in the shortest possible time. Please refer to our case studies for examples of this application.