By the OGJ Online Staff
HOUSTON, June 6 -- China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) plans to expand its 8-million-tonne/year Jinling Petrochemical Corp. refinery at Nanjing to 13 million tonnes/year.
The changes at the plant in Jiangsu province will increase sour crude processing capacity by 3 million tonnes/year to 7 million.
The project will cost 1.412 billion yuan ($17 million), said Zhang Yuhong, an engineer at the Jinling Petrochemical Design Institute, Sinopec.
In recent years, the refinery revamped its main units to handle Middle Eastern crudes with a higher sulfur content than domestic oil. By the end of 2000 the Nanjing refinery had the capacity to process 4 million tonnes/year of light Saudi Arabian crude.
As part of its 5-year plan, the plant will revamp its No. 3 crude distillation unit for more sour processing. Its other two crude distillation units will still run domestic crudes and foreign low-sulfur crudes.
Sinopec will build a 40-million-tonne tank farm in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, and a pipeline from there to Nanjing to move the imported oil. Currently, crude is moved to the refinery by sea and the Yangtze River.
The 5-year plan calls for construction of a 1.5-million-tonne/year hydrocracking unit in two stages, a 0.8-million-tonne/year delayed coker, and other units.
Because the refinery has mainly processed domestic crudes, at the end of 2000 the percentage of cracking capability to the crude distillation unit capability was 62.5%. Running more light, sour crudes by the end of 2005 will drop that to 56.1%.
Sinopec's goal in revamping the refinery is to satisfy domestic fuel demand and export some low-sulfur fuel oil. The sulfur content of diesel for domestic use is 1,680 ppm and the refinery will be able to blend diesel to meet international standards.