Petrochemical
Apart from the anchors which you can find back in the Refractory Anchors menu (also applicable in the Petrochem industry), Silicon would like you to discover the unique Speed-Cells.®
Silicon is indeed well-known in the industry for its innovative spirit, not only in product development but also in a much broader way. For instance, we are constantly looking for improvements in our production methods to increase delivery times, to reduce cost prices and so on.
Silicon invented the Speed-cells® (SCS) technology more than 20 years ago. It was at that time a major breakthrough for the petrochemical world. Through the years, our system has been accepted in the American PIP (Process Industry Practice) as an alternative to Hex-Metal.
The winning team :
A Cell with a nut (already welded on) screwed on a shoulder stud (adjustable depending on the height of the lining,)
If you wish to read more over advantages and installation, please click on this link.
2 years ago, a new progress took place regarding the facilitation of the installation of the refractory concrete around the SCS. The reason was the following: it was sometimes quite difficult to reach the stud.
This stud is located under the cell as you can see on the picture. The refractory is firstly pushed under the Speed-Cell® with the finger until the area below it is completely filled. The unfortunate outcome was that some areas were occasionally left without any refractory!
In order to solve this issue, it was decided to change the SHAPE of the SCS into a CONIC shape (see drawing).
SECOND GENERATION SCS (Patent Pending in various countries):
This new SCS has a lot of fans amongst the major companies of the petrochemical industry. Silicon's goal is to help all the actors of the refractory industry from customers to suppliers. That included in the present case the operators at the last part of the chain, responsible for the installation of the concrete. This will of course also have a positive impact on the speed of installation and will eventually help saving cost.
Now comes the THIRD GENERATION SCS (Patent Pending in various countries):
Silicon services customers worldwide. You can communicate with us in either Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish.
In 2009, Petrobras chose the Speed-cells !
Petrobras chose the Silicon expertise through the Stud Welding technology and the Speed-cells® application (as an alternative to the former manually welded HexMetal).
The maintenance stop of one Replan FCC's (the largest refinery of Petrobras equivalent to 20% of all the refining in Brazil) took place in January/February 2009. Speed Cells® were applied in the Cyclones, Air grid and 4 new Cyclone's Hoppers with great success.
Once again the high quality and speed of Silicon's Stud Welding was demonstrated: more than a dozen of thousands of weld points did not face one rejection. The entire process, from the marking of the weld points till its total completion, took only 2 weeks. Moreover, the installation of the Speed Cells in 4 new Cyclone Hoppers took only 5 hours per Hopper.
The maintenance managers of REPLAN were fully satisfied as they enjoyed seeing that the application of Speed Cells was 5 times faster than the method used previously.
As Luís Henrique (Maintenance Senior Technician) quoted: "We made great progresses not only in speed but also in security. Indeed thanks to this faster installation, we could use a smaller team. Fewer people were exposed to risks. Petrobrás always demands the best in the market to move forward".
This first collaboration was the first of a long series ! So long that we opened a branch in Brazil (Silicon do Brasil) in order to be able to serve our customer of that region of the globe in the best conditions !
