‘Water Cooling/“Drum Bulging." The rate of cooling water injection is critical. Increasing the flow of water too rapidly can “case harden” the main channels up through the coker without cooling all of the coke radially across the coke bed. The coke has low porosity (the porosity comes from the thermal cracking) which then allows the water to flow away from the main channels in the coke drum. Porosity of delayed coke has been measured experimentally in the past by measuring water flow through cores about the size of hockey pucks cut from large chunks of needle coke from different areas of a commercial coke drum. Most of the coke cores were found to have no porosity ‘except the coke right at the wall which had some porosity . This explains problems that have been found to occur with drums bulging during coo! down. If the rate of water is too high, the high pressure causes the water to flow up the outside of the coke bed cooling the wall of the coke drum. Coke has a higher coefficient of thermal expansion than does steel (154 for coke versus 120 forstec!, cm/emv°C x 10”), This was measured in the transverse direction from a chunk of needle coke. The coefficient of thermal expansion for raw sponge coke is probably even greater than that of the needle coke tested. DELAYED COKING UNIT HARDWARE ‘A basic coker operation flow diagram is shown below in Figure 2 to illustrate some of the delayed coking unit hardware. a Figure 2. Feat rion Basic Coker Operation oluran aoler Drill Rigs Cut water Tube Furnace Great Lakes Carbon Corporation