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The Three Ages of a Converter

June 14, 2023

In an elegant exercise in repurposing, an ageing 20.5 ft ID converter at Simplot’s Lathrop site was gracefully retired and replaced by a new NORAM-designed converter made redundant by its previous owner. The challenge: to modify a 3-bed converter to a 4-bed converter with the same catalyst bed configuration as the old converter (2 catalyst passes in 4 beds – 2 in parallel).

The original converter started life more than 50 years ago. Its replacement had its nascence as a new 3-bed converter for a distant plant which was shut down shortly after the commissioning of the converter. With some creative engineering, it now lives on in a new guise, taking the place of the original converter.

The new converter module was fabricated in two modules in Florida, while the eight duct sections were manufactured in Arizona. The components converged for installation and integration at a new location at the Simplot Lathrop facility, all within a very tight timeframe and ready to meet the plant shutdown deadline.

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