PJSC Tatneft, Almetyevsk, Russia, has commissioned a 2 million-tonne/year delayed coking unit at the 9 million-tpy refinery of subsidiary OJSC Taneco’s multiphase integrated refining and petrochemical complex in Nizhnekamsk, 250 km from Tatarstan’s capital city of Kazan.
The unit, which will enable the refinery to increase its refining depth to 95% and completely eliminate its yield of dark oil products, began operating on July 3, Tatneft said.
Alongside increasing the refinery’s output of naphtha, the delayed coker will produce light and heavy coker gas oils for use as feedstock to boost production of finished motor fuels.
Heavy coker gas oils will be further processed at the refinery’s hydrocracking unit and, in the future, the catalytic cracking unit startup of a heavy coker gas oil hydrotreater, according to a June presentation from Tatneft.
The delayed coker’s production of light coker gas oil will serve as feedstock for the refinery’s diesel fuel hydrotreater, while its 700,000 tpy of petroleum coke output will be used as fuel for power generation at Tatneft’s Nizhnekamsk heat and power plant.
The company did not disclose a projected timeline for the unit’s ramp-up to full capacity.
Development plans
Located at the refinery’s deep conversion plant, the coker comes as part of an ongoing program Tatarstan launched in 2005 to strengthen the country’s refining industry (OGJ Online, Aug. 6, 2008), as well as in accordance with basic provisions of a quadripartite agreement on modernization of Russia’s oil processing industry between oil companies; the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation; the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological, and Nuclear Supervision (Rostechnadzor); and the Federal Agency for Technical Regulating and Metrology (Rosstandart) to reequip and upgrade oil processing capacities at Russian Federation refineries (OGJ Online, June 1, 2016).
The first stage of Taneco’s complex entered operation in December 2011 with startup of the refinery’s nameplate 7 million-tpy CDU-VDU-7, which following a series of upgrades in 2013, increased crude processing capacity by 115% to 9 million tpy.
In March 2014, Taneco commissioned a 2.9 million-tpy hydrocracking unit, also at the deep conversion plant, which enabled the start of Euro 5-quality fuel production from the refinery, according to Tatneft.
Alongside CDU-VDU-7 and the hydrocracker, additional processing capacities now in operation at the complex include:
• Visbreaking: 2.4 million tpy.
• Naphtha stabilization: 1.1 million tpy.
• Base oil (lubes) production: 250,000 tpy.
• Combined sulfur recovery: 139,000 tpy.
• Hydrogen production: 99,000 tpy.
As of June, current units under construction as part of the Taneco’s refining complex development plan include a naphtha hydrotreater, a heavy coker gas oil hydrotreater, an isomerization unit, a catalytic reformer, and a catalytic cracking unit.
The catalytic reforming and isomerization units, as well as related offsite installations, are scheduled for startup sometime during this year’s second half, Tatneft said.
As part of its second-stage development of the complex, Taneco also began construction at the refinery in 2015 on a crude unit, GDU-VDU-6.
Designed to boost nameplate crude oil processing capacity at Nizhnekamsk to 14 million tpy by 2020, GDU-VDU-6 is due to reach physical completion in 2018, Tatneft told investors in June.
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
