Question about refineries
 

Why is there always a huge natural gas flame above refineries? Why wouldn't they capture this gas for sale? Is it not natural gas and some unusable byproduct?

Always been curious about that.....

The flair stacks are used for emergency pressure releifs. When you see a flair stack thats active its an indication that there is a problem and they are releasing pressure. Better to burn it off than to send it to the atmosphere. Whats not seen is in the top edge of the stack is a "steam ring", that does a great job of capturing any unburned gases.

They do the same thing at many meatpacking plants... just burning extra methane, or something.

Too bad they can't evaporate the smell of blood. It gets me hungry every time... http://www.pelicanparts.com/support/.../cheeburga.gif

Meat is Murder.

I also read that they do flame outs to measure gas quality, pressure and volume.