Problem No. 25: High temperature in top of HP scrubber

Sometimes, when a process condition changes in a urea plant, for example, an operating temperature, the cause is not clear. Such a situation happened at Kermanshah Petrochemical Company in Iran. Mr Reza Keyhani started a discussion in the UreaKnowHow.com Round Tables to aid his troubleshooting. The following discussion helped Reza to find the root cause of the problem much more quickly. Mr Keyhani experienced a high temperature in the top of the high pressure (HP) scrubber. The function of a HP scrubber is to reduce the ammonia content in the inert stream coming from the high pressure synthesis section by washing the inert stream with the recycle carbamate and cooling it against cooling water.