OREANDA-NEWS. The on-site installation of major facilities — fractionating columns, for the distillation of crude oil into various fractions — has recently been completed at the Gazprom Neft Omsk Refinery’s newly reconstructed AT-9 distillation unit. Installation of these columns (two of which exceed 50 metres in height) required the use of cranes capable of lifting up to 400 tonnes. Some 2,000 tonnes of steel construction has thus far been installed at the site, and pre-commissioning works initiated.

A range of installation and construction works are being undertaken in the course of reconstructing the AT-9 unit, including the pouring of concrete foundations for the first ever closed-flare facility at any refinery in Siberia; something which will do much to ensure the safety and environmental friendliness of the primary crude distillation process. The new flare unit has a capacity of around 260 tonnes of gas per hour. In addition to this, a transformer substation is also being built at the site, together with a bunker-like control room, with specialists commencing the installation of some 30 km of process pipelines.

Modernisation of the AT-9 unit will improve energy efficiency and reduce operating costs, while increasing production by 12 percent, to five million tonnes per year. This will allow the production of the necessary volumes of high-quality feedstock for isomerisation, gasoline reforming and deep-conversion complexes, allowing the Omsk Refinery to increase production of diesel fuels and high-octane gasoline. 

Major reconstruction of the AT-9 plant was initiated in 2012, with completion planned for the end of 2015.

Gazprom Neft Omsk Refinery General Director Oleg Belyavsky commented: “Modernisation of the AT-9 unit has allowed us to optimise the process of primary crude oil distillation. The newly reconstructed facility will allow us to bring together the electrical desalting and oil dehydration processes, as well as gasoline stabilisation, into a single production cycle. A range of obsolete processing facilities will be got rid of once reconstruction of the AT-9 unit is complete.”