FCC incident forces unplanned shutdown of Unipetrol’s Kralupy refinery
Crude oil processing remains suspended at Unipetrol AS subsidiary Ceska Rafinerska AS’s 3.3 million-tonne/year Kralupy refinery in Czech Republic following an unplanned shutdown of the plant in May.
The company halted crude processing operations at the refinery in the days following “an extraordinary event” that occurred on May 17 at the plant’s fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) unit, Unipetrol said in regulatory filing.
Details regarding the precise nature of the FCC incident were not disclosed.
Operations at CRC’s 5.4 million-tpy Litvinov refinery will continue in limited production mode, with polypropylene production at Unipetrol’s nearby Chempark Zaluzi petrochemical complex in Litvinov also to remain restricted following the Aug. 13, 2015, explosion and ensuing fire at the site’s 544,000-tpy ethylene plant (OGJ Online, Sept. 9, 2015; Aug. 14, 2015), the company said.
On May 18, Unipetrol said it expected to resume crude processing at the Kralupy refinery within a few weeks.
This year Unipetrol planned to implement De-SOx catalyst additive technology at the Kralupy refinery’s FCC to help reduce SOx emissions from the unit, the company said in its latest annual report to investors.
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
