Chevron South Africa (Pty.) Ltd., a subsidiary of Chevron Corp., has reported it will begin one of the biggest routine maintenance and safety inspection projects ever at its 110,000-b/d Cape Town refinery at Milnerton, South Africa, starting this month.
Scheduled to run from Feb. 13 throughout the month of March, the planned maintenance and safety inspection will involve the safe shutdown of all production units, with the exception of some storage tanks that will be to manage petroleum product supplies as part of Chevron’s contingency plans to mitigate any potential fuel constraints during the maintenance period, the company told OGJ in a Feb. 9 e-mail.
In addition to routine maintenance and safety inspection activities executed annually at the refinery, this latest maintenance period, into which Chevron has invested about 412 million rand ($35.6 million), also will include work to complete a 450 million rand ($38.9 million) revamp of the plant’s flare system.
The flare modernization project, which involves construction of a multipoint ground flare and a 100-m elevated flare to replace the refinery’s existing high-level flare, comes as part of Chevron’s efforts to minimize the plant’s environmental footprint as well as improve its operational efficiencies, said Doug Pottenger, general manager of the Cape Town plant.
The multipoint nature of the ground flare is intended to increase the efficiency of combustion of refinery off gases, as combustion occurs over a larger area when compared to an elevated flare, where combustion occurs from only one release source, the company said.
The switch to a ground flare also means the off gas currently seen burning at the refinery’s existing elevated flare will be combusted safely, quietly, and smoke-free once the project is fully commissioned.
“Since the ground flare was successfully installed in November 2014, there is a very noticeable reduction in noise emissions from the refinery,” Pottenger said.
Project-related work during the upcoming maintenance period will focus on the new elevated flare, which will be about 50 m higher than the plant’s existing flare.
Already at an advanced stage of construction, the new elevated flare, designed for emergency relief scenarios only, is scheduled to be operational by the March conclusion of maintenance and inspection activities, according to Pottenger.
“During routine operation, all that will be seen at the top of the [new elevated] flare is a small pilot flame,” said Pottenger.
Chevron launched the flare modernization project at Cape Town in 2009, according to a series of filings with South African regulatory agencies.
