Delaware City refinery due hydrocracker

Dec. 22, 2011
PBF Holding Co. LLC and affiliate Delaware City Refining Co. LLC have reported conditional plans to build a mild hydrocracker and hydrogen plant at their 190,000 b/d Delaware City, Del., refinery.

PBF Holding Co. LLC and affiliate Delaware City Refining Co. LLC have reported conditional plans to build a mild hydrocracker and hydrogen plant at their 190,000 b/d Delaware City, Del., refinery.

Delaware City Refining and another PBF affiliate bought the then-idle refinery and its operating terminal from Valero Energy Corp. in June 2010 and promptly announced plans to restart the refinery after performing maintenance (OGJ Online, June 2, 2010.) Valero had shut the refinery in 2009 but kept the terminal open.

The new hydrocracker would cut sulfur content in about 65,000 b/d of distillate to less than 15 ppm from 2,000 ppm and allow processing of a heavier crude slate. It would handle streams from the Delaware City refinery and the 170,000 b/d refinery at Paulsboro, NJ, that PBF bought from Valero in December 2010 (OGJ Online, Sept. 27, 2010).

In a statement, PBF said the $1 billion construction project is contingent on “the issuance of timely and appropriate federal and state environmental and other permits that will not increase the cost to build or operate the project, as well as acceptable labor agreements that will ensure that the project can be built in an efficient and cost-effective manner.”

Major process units at the Delaware City refinery are a fluid coking unit, fluid catalytic cracking unit, hydrocracking unit with a hydrogen plant, continuous catalytic reformer, two alkylation units, and several hydrotreating units.

The Paulsboro refinery has a delayed coker, fluid cat cracker, hydrotreaters, reformer, alkylation unit, and 12,000 b/d of lube oil processing capacity.