Applications
Degassing
Our chemical degassing products will help you gain a competitive edge, increase profitability, and reduce turnaround time for your operation.
Degassing Overview
For decades refiners and chemical plant operators have been faced with the need to remove hazardous and flammable gasses from their process equipment prior to personnel entry or beginning any maintenance or inspection activities. Steaming out the equipment has been the traditional way degassing was done, and tons of steam was used to remove these contaminants from the process units. This steaming out took time, resources, and produced copious condensate that had to be treated in wastewater treatment.
In recent years plant operators have realized that using chemical degassing products with the steam or as a cascade application will help them gain a competitive edge, increase profitability, and reduce turnaround time for their operation.
Superior degassing with FQE® LEL-Vapor
The demand for system decontamination, including degassing, which meets or exceeds constantly changing regulatory safety and environmental requirements is growing. LEL-Vapor is a safe, non-hazardous, non-petroleum based product for use in plant process equipment decontamination and degassing. LEL-Vapor can be applied either by injection into a steam flow or as part of a liquid cascade solution.
LEL-Vapor is a proprietary blend of surfactants, penetrating and wetting agents, and specially selected safe chemicals that are not SARA 313, DOT, California Proposition 65 or CERCLA reportable. LEL-Vapor is best described as a super-detergent.
The competitive edge in degassing, cleaning, and turnarounds
A carefully planned turnaround utilizing LEL-Vapor degassing and absorption process returns processing and crude units to full production in record time.
Can be merged into the shutdown phase – minimizing turnaround time
Greatly reduces steam-out time
Limits release of hydrocarbon gas
Expedites entry into vessels without the use of fresh air
Reduces mechanical cleaning time
Wastewater disposal without concern for bioculture toxicity
Degassing is environmentally safe and friendly
Degassing with LEL-Vapor reduces personnel safety concerns and reduces the release of gas into the environment.
Reduces benzene to zero
Reduces H2S to zero
Reduces LELs to zero
Reduces/eliminates hazardous waste
Reduces Ammonia to zero
Non-hazardous
No VOC’s
No flash point
Applications
Caustic Treaters
Crude Units
Ethylene Units
Flare Systems
Gas Compressor Systems
Hydrocarbon Tanks
Hydrofiners
Hydrotreaters
Merox Units
Natural Gas Sweetening Units
Pipelines
Pipestill
Reformers
Sour Water Tanks
Sponge Absorbers
Ethylene plant oil and water quench systems
Solvent recovery systems in polymer production
Any system containing light ends

White Paper
Online/In-Service
Exchanger Cleaning
Learn about a new shock treatment application for heavy hydrocarbon fouled exchangers.
Hard Surface Cleaning with FQE LEL-Surface
In addition to degassing the void volume of process equipment the surfaces will still need to be de-oiled to achieve zero LEL readings and be suitable for any hot work. LEL-Surface offers a blend of degassing and superior cleaning capabilities. LEL-Surface provides very good hard surface cleaning – much better than the competitive products that were tested. LEL-Surface also showed very good LEL reduction compared to the competitors.
LEL-Surface is water-based, non-combustible, mildly alkaline (pH 8.5-9) and safe for wastewater treatment plant disposal. The degreasing and cleaning capability for LEL-Surface is derived from new technology in solvency wherein the ingredients have very high KB (kuri – butanol) factors (well over 100+.)
All of the FQE LEL products can be used together and are chemically compatible with FQE H2S Scavenger and FQE Pyrophoric. They can be added in conjunction with these products during the steaming or cascade process for the rapid reduction of LEL readings and effective control of both Hydrogen Sulphide and Iron Sulphide deposits.

Application of FQE LEL-V – Vapor Phase Cleaning and Degassing
Wastewater Disposal
Both FQE LEL-Vapor and FQE LEL-Surface will not strongly emulsify residual oils, allowing for a rapid phase separation of the oils after the circulation fluid has been removed from the unit.
The residual oils can be recovered or disposed of. The remaining wastewater will be relatively free of oils and can be sent directly to the wastewater plant for processing. No prolonged delays in wastewater processing are expected.