By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Mar. 11 -- Colombia's Empresa Colombiana de Petróleos (Ecopetrol) has awarded a basic engineering and licensing contract for upgrading its 230,000 b/d Barrancabermeja refining complex. The work, to be performed by the US subsidiary of French firm Axens IPF Group Technologies, will enable Ecopetrol to produce cleaner fuels that conform with a 2003 government directive.
Axens will subcontract individual elements of the work, implementing technologies for upgrading diesel and gasoline qualities to the new specifications.
Prosernat IFP, Paris, will upgrade the sulfur recovery facilities; Technip KTI, Rome, will install the hydrogen production facilities; and Tipiel SA, Bogotá, will perform associated engineering.
The project will include a 55,000 b/d diesel hydrotreater, a 19,000 b/d FCC gasoline desulfurizer, a 55 tonne/day sulfur recovery unit (SRU), 139 tonne/day Claus tail gas treatment for all SRU effluents, a hydrogen plant producing 18 MMscfd of 99.9% purity hydrogen including a new methane steam reformer and a separate pressure swing adsorption unit to recover H2 from the existing stream, a 2,100 tonne/day amine regenerator, 2,550 tonne/day sour water stripping facilities, and utility interconnection and off-site storage tank facilities.
Ecopetrol said it would award the engineering, procurement, and construction contract within the year and would have the new units in full operation by 2007.
