As with any equipment, improper design and operation of waste heat boilers may result in costly
failures. Any changes in hardware design and adjustments to operational parameters or practices
should be carefully reviewed and managed in order to assure their reliability. For waste heat boilers in
petroleum refining processes, engineers must consider not only problems from the boiler feed water
side but also potential problems from the process side. Case studies in typical waste heat boiler
systems in refining processes are presented along with identified failure causes and solutions.