Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd. (MRPL), a subsidiary of Oil & Natural Gas Corp. Ltd., has commissioned a fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) unit that comprises part of the long-delayed Phase 3 expansion project at its 194,000-b/d refinery in Mangalore, India (OGJ Online, June 8, 2010).
The FCC unit was commissioned on Aug. 27, and products from the unit already are being routed to their respective destinations, MRPL said in a notice to India’s BSE Ltd. (formerly Bombay Stock Exchange).
Commissioning of the FCC will increase the refinery’s production of LPG, light distillates, and propylene to be used as feedstock for an integrated 440,000-tonne/year polypropylene (PP) unit, MRPL said.
The company previously said it expects to reach manual completion on the PP unit, also a part of the Phase 3 expansion, by October (OGJ Online, Aug. 14, 2014).
No details were disclosed regarding the third train of a three-train sulfur recovery unit, which MRPL earlier said was due to be commissioned by the end of August.
Announced in February 2010, the Phase 3 expansion project was designed to increase the refinery’s complexity and profitability by increasing refining capacity to 300,000 b/d as well as equip the plant to process lower-cost heavy, sour, and high-TAN crudes, according to MRPL.
Earlier in the year, MRPL commissioned other units in the Phase 3 expansion, including a 650,000-tpy coker heavy gas oil hydrotreating unit (OGJ Online, May 15, 2014) as well as a 3 million-tpy delayed coking unit (OGJ Online, Apr. 4, 2014).
