Bahrain Petroleum Co. (Bapco), a division of the country’s National Oil & Gas Authority (NOGA), has commissioned a series of General Electric International Inc.’s advanced mobile water units as part of an on-site desalination to convert seawater into high-purity boiler feedwater water at Bapco’s 267,000-b/d Awali refinery at Sitra on Bahrain’s eastern coast.
GE Water & Process Technologies provided Bapco a total of 13 mobile water units, including six mobile seawater multimedia-filter containers, five mobile seawater reverse-osmosis containers, two mobile brackish-water reverse osmosis containers, and four diesel-operated electrical generators, GE said.
The service company also supplied all mobile pumping skids, tanks, as well as interconnecting piping and cabling for the desalination project.
The new mobile water fleet, which produces 136 cu m/hr of purified water for immediate use in refining processes, entered operation in May and will continue to produce Bapco’s desalinated water requirements for 1 year, the service provider said.
The mobile desalination fleet comes as part of Bapco’s contribution to water-preservation efforts in Bahrain, which will remain one of the most water-stressed countries in the world through at least 2040, according the World Resources Institute.
The new system replaces the refinery’s previous desalination program, which as a result of limited in-house distillate water production from the plant’s existing desalination units, required the operator to import water via tank trucks.
GE revealed neither the value nor duration of its work on the project.
Bapco, which receives about one sixth of its crude feedstock from Bahrain field and the remainder from Saudi Arabia, continues to plan for a proposed major overhaul of the refinery that simultaneously aims to expand crude processing capacity to 360,000 b/d and improve overall quality of finished products (OGJ Online, Oct. 9, 2014; Sept. 16, 2014).
To be completed in a series of phases over a number of years, the modernization will include the staged implementation of at least five units, including a residue hydrocracker, vacuum gas oil hydrocracker, diesel hydrotreater, sulfur recovery unit, and delayed coker, according to NOGA.
Bapco has yet to disclose a definitive timeline for when the planned modernization will be fully commissioned.
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
