Rompetrol Rafinare SA—jointly owned by Kazakhstan’s state-owned KazMunaiGas subsidiary KMG International Group 54.63% and Romania’s Ministry of Economy, Energy & Business Environment 44.69%—has completed an efficiency project at the delayed coking unit of its 5-million tonne/year Petromidia refinery in Navodari, Romania, on the Black Sea (OGJ Online, May 5, 2020).
Completed during the refinery’s recent turnaround, the more than $1.4-million project involved installation of a new light gas oil recovery system at the delayed coking plant’s 180-C2 fractionation column, the operator said on July 31.
Alongside reducing the yield of heavy gas oil to increase the refinery’s overall processing of feedstock, the project also optimizes the thermal profile on the fractionation column to enable additional recovery of light gas oil.
The project also allows increased removal of heat from the 180-C2 column, which leads to production of about 7 tonnes/ hr of steam and, simultaneously, a pressure reduction on the system, Rompetrol Rafinare said.
“Our company has successfully implemented a project that supports plans and objectives to increase efficiency, reduce costs, optimize operational flows, but also to modernize and align with the most modern crude oil processing solutions,” said Felix Crudu Tesloveanu, Rompetrol Rafinare’s general manager.
“This initiative joins [Rompetrol Rafinare’s other] large projects to reduce the impact on the environment and digitalization projects, meant to bring more efficiency,” Tesloveanu said.
This latest modernization project at the refinery’s delayed coker comes amid the 35th anniversary of the unit’s 1985 startup.
In 2013, Rompetrol Rafinare carried out a more than $50-million modernization project at the delayed coker that reduced the unit’s technology consumption by 90%, decreased annual operational losses by $3 million, and helped lower the refinery’s overall energy consumption, according to the operator.
Additional works
Earlier in the year, KMG International confirmed the Kazakh-Romanian Energy Investment Fund (FIEKR) approved two new investment projects aimed at creating synergies to production processes at the integrated Petromidia refinery (OGJ Online, Apr. 7, 2020).
Scheduled to be completed in September 2022 at a cost of $35 million, the first project will involve construction and integration of a new dewaxing plant to enable the refinery to expand production of wintertime diesel fuels as well as increase output of aviation jet fuel.
Designed to expand polymer production at Petromidia by more than 30% to help meet regional demand for petrochemicals, the second major project—scheduled for completion in June 2021—involves an $8-million conversion of the refinery’s existing high-density polyethylene unit into a polypropylene (PP) plant to increase the site’s current PP production of 90,000 tpy to 120,000 tpy by 2022.
While FIEKR will fully finance costs of the HDPE-PP unit conversion from its own resources, the fund will only cover about 30% of the new dewaxing plant, with the remaining project balance to be secured from local or international financial sources, KMG International said.
