Environmentally Sensitive Flares: No Smoke, Odor or Noise; and No Visible Flame

Abstract Onshore and offshore, flares are essential safety systems for energy exploration, production, transportation and storage, including ship-board flares on floating production, storage and off-loading (FPSO) vessels. Despite extremely wide variations in the flow of volatile, carcinogenic waste gases or other dangerous offgases, and regardless of the worst weather conditions, including hurricane or typhoon-force winds up to 400 km/hr (250 mph), flares must work right, each and every time, or the consequences can be catastrophic. The two most important considerations in flaring waste gases or offgases must always be safety and reliability. Protection of the regional and global environment by dependable and complete in-cineration of waste streams is another very important requirement. Burners of various configurations are the heart of all flare systems. Instrumentation and control systems are the nervous system and the brains. Low-profile enclosed flares and in-ground earthen enclosed flares offer many advantages in comparison to elevated (open-burner) flares. With state-of-art enclosed flares, sometimes called "thermal oxidizer flares", energy recovery from flared streams of gases, as well as liquids and slurries, is possible.