Leveraging Control and Monitoring Technologies: Reliability and Lower Costs for Electrical Trace-Heating Systems in Petrochemical Facilities

Electric trace heating is commonly used by the petrochemical industry for the freeze protection of water lines or the temperature maintenance of process fluids. An unreliable trace-heating system can impact the business significantly by damaging the process fluids/piping and potentially causing lost production. Controlling and monitoring the performance of trace heating is important to ensure that the processes are running as desired. This article focuses on the advances made by the trace-heating industry in control and monitoring technologies to improve the reliability of trace-heating systems as well as reduce their total installed costs. A real-world case study example is used to illustrate the reduction in total installed costs using control and monitoring capabilities.