Essar Oil Ltd. has commissioned a large C5-C6 isomerization unit at its 300,000-b/d Vadinar refinery under expansion and upgrade in Gujarat, India (OGJ Online, Oct. 24, 2011).
The unit, part of an expansion that will push the refinery’s crude capacity to 375,000 b/d, has a capacity of 700 million tonnes/year. It achieved naphtha feed cut 32 days after the introduction of hydrogen.
The unit uses the Penex-DIH process licensed by UOP LLC. It’s the first Vadinar expansion unit to be fully commissioned.
The refinery is scheduled to be operating at the expanded capacity in the first quarter of 2012. Optimization will further boost capacity to 405,000 b/d by September 2012, Essar says.
Bob Tippee | Editor
Bob Tippee has been chief editor of Oil & Gas Journal since January 1999 and a member of the Journal staff since October 1977. Before joining the magazine, he worked as a reporter at the Tulsa World and served for four years as an officer in the US Air Force. A native of St. Louis, he holds a degree in journalism from the University of Tulsa.
