OREANDA-NEWS. September 27, 2012. The Moscow refinery has started set-up and commissioning operations on the new closed cycle mechanical treatment facilities and on the bitumen plant. The Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin paid a working visit to the new facilities.

The capacity of the closed cycle mechanical treatment facilities is 6.7 million m3 per year of high quality, fully treated industrial waste flows. The modern green technologies employed here make the treated sewage six times cleaner, thus reducing the load on the municipal facilities. As a result, air pollution goes down by 97%.

The high-tech bitumen plant with a capacity of 1.7 mmt per year is designed to produce high quality bitumen-based materials. Its revamping has resulted in an increased performance. The plant is capable of producing and dispatching several different types of bitumen products at a time. All production processes are fully automated. The plant features a pressurized bitumen loading system which meets the highest environmental standards while dispatching products. The resulting air pollution is down by 90%.

The commercial operation of the closed cycle mechanical treatment facilities and the new bitumen plant will allow the refinery to drastically reduce its sanitary protection zone.

Chairman of the Management Board of Gazprom Neft Alexander Dyukov commented, "Several projects are underway to improve the environmental performance of the enterprise as part of the large-scale campaign to upgrade the Moscow Refinery with support of the city administration. These projects require sizable investments. By 2014 Gazprom Neft will invest a total of 14 billion RUB in environmental activities and also in construction and modernisation of assets directly impacting the refinery's environmental performance".