HMEL lets contract for Bathinda refinery

July 3, 2017
HPCL-Mittal Energy Ltd. (HMEL), a joint venture of state-owned Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd. and privately held Mittal Energy Investment Pte. Ltd., Singapore, has let a contract to Haldor Topsoe AS, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark, for a project designed to expand production of Bharat Stage (BS) 6-grade fuels (equivalent to Euro 6-quality fuels) at HMEL's 9 million-tonne/year Guru Gobind Singh refinery at Village Phullokhari, about 35 km from Bathinda in India's northern state of Punjab.

Robert Brelsford
Downstream Technology Editor

HPCL-Mittal Energy Ltd. (HMEL), a joint venture of state-owned Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd. and privately held Mittal Energy Investment Pte. Ltd., Singapore, has let a contract to Haldor Topsoe AS, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark, for a project designed to expand production of Bharat Stage (BS) 6-grade fuels (equivalent to Euro 6-quality fuels) at HMEL's 9 million-tonne/year Guru Gobind Singh refinery at Village Phullokhari, about 35 km from Bathinda in India's northern state of Punjab.

As part of the contract package awarded by Engineers India Ltd.-which is providing engineering, procurement, and construction management on the BS 6 fuel-quality project-Haldor Topsoe will deliver technology licensing and equipment for a diesel hydrotreating unit (DHU) as well as a revamp of the refinery's existing hydrogen generation unit (HGU), Topsoe said.

For the DHU, Topsoe's scope of delivery includes process technology, the reactor, accompanying internals, and its proprietary HyBRIM TK-611 ultralow-sulfur diesel catalyst to help improve nitrogen and sulfur-removal activity by 25% and enable longer cycle lengths during processing of complex feeds.

For the HGU revamp, Topsoe will provide two of its proprietary heat-exchange reformers, one for each of the unit's two trains.

The DHU will have a nameplate capacity of 1.9 million tpy, while the HGU revamp will generate an additional 22,000 tpy of hydrogen, according to documents from India's Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (EFCC).

Following its completion and startup in fourth-quarter 2019, HMEL's BS 6 fuels project will equip the Guru Gobind Singh refinery to meet the government of India's nationwide compliance deadline for 100% production of BS 6-quality fuels (maximum sulfur content, 10 ppmw) of Apr. 1, 2020 (OGJ, May 1, 2017, p. 64; OGJ Online, Apr. 4, 2017).

Topsoe did not disclose a value of the 36-month contract.

Refinery expansion, upgrades

The 11 billion-rupee upgrading project to meet BS 6-quality fuel specifications at HMEL's Guru Gobind Singh refinery comes alongside and as part of the public-private partnership's broader plans to expand the manufacturing site's crude processing capacity to 11.25 million tpy from its current 9 million-tpy capacity, HMEL and EIL said in filings to EFCC.

Approved for environmental clearance by EFCC in June 2015, the capacity expansion, now under way, includes a combination of new units as well as debottlenecking work at existing units to improve throughput rates, HMEL said.

Neither HMEL nor EIL officially have confirmed a firm timeline or total estimated cost of the overall capacity expansion project.