Assiut National Oil Processing Co. (ANOPC)—established in 2018 by Egyptian General Petroleum Corp. subsidiary Assiut Oil Refining Co. (ASORC)—has, through its main contractor, let a contract to Nijhuis Saur Industries to provide a new wastewater treatment plant for ANOPC’s proposed 2.5-million tonnes/year (tpy) grassroots hydrocracking complex currently under construction in Assiut, Egypt (OGJ Online, Oct. 8, 2018).
As part of the contract—awarded by Petroleum Projects & Technical Consultation Co. (Petrojet), which is providing main engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) services on the new complex—Nijhuis Saur Industries and partner Bahadii Group will deliver the complete engineering, manufacturing, procurement, and transportation of the technology, instrumentation, and electrical supply package for a wastewater treatment plant, the service provider said.
Nijhuis Saur Industries also will provide supervision to Petrojet during the plant’s installation and commissioning.
Designed to help ANOPC meet Egyptian regulators’ stringent effluent discharge limits as well as mitigate water scarcity in the country by enabling reuse of water in the complex’s production processes, the new wastewater plant will treat several water streams, including cooling tower blowdown, oily water effluent, spent caustic effluent, and sanitary water.
Consisting of various Nijhuis Saur Industries’ technologies, the plant’s process flow will begin with treating wastewater via API separation units and primary equalization, which will then be followed by a coagulation-flocculation and dissolved air flotation (DAF) water treatment process, according to the service provider.
The plant’s secondary treatment will consist of biological tanks with activated sludge, with the final polishing step before clean water enters the zero-liquid discharge (ZLD) plant—which will close the water loop—to include both sand and carbon filtration.
Sludge generated from the different process steps will be collected and treated with a sludge dewatering system, while the concentrated spent caustic effluent stream will have a specialized pretreatment installation to reduce the wastewater’s high chemical oxygen demand (COD) by oxidizing all reactive sulfur compounds and enabling them to become biodegradable for further treatment.
Scheduled for startup in 2023, the new wastewater treatment plant will allow ANOPC’s hydrocracking complex to produce high-value petroleum products while minimizing its water use and avoiding discharge of pollutants into the Nile River, even under harsh Egyptian weather conditions, Nijhuis Saur Industries said.
Complex overview
Intended to support the Egyptian government’s strategy to reduce emissions as well as the country’s current reliance on and associated costs for foreign product imports, ANOPC’s Assiut hydrocracking complex (AHC), once in operation, will process 2.5 million tpy of heavy fuel oil (mazut) from ASORC’s nearby 4.5-million tpy Assiut refinery—about 400 km south of Cairo—to produce about 2.8 million tpy of Euro 5-quality diesel and other products.
At a revised total investment of about $2.8 billion, the new hydrocracking complex will produce the following:
- 400,000 tpy of naphtha.
- 100,000 tpy of LPG.
- 300,000 tpy of coke.
- 66,000 tpy of sulfur.
With site preparation works in Assiut for construction of the complex started in 2019, the AHC currently remains scheduled for startup in 2022 (OGJ Online, Nov. 30, 2020).
