Tupras lets contract for revamp projects at Turkish refineries

Turkish Petroleum Refineries Corp. (Tupras) has let a contract to UK-based AVEVA Solutions Ltd. to provide software technology to be used in a major brownfield modernization program designed to maximize production, increase safety, and extend the life of Tupras’s four refineries in Turkey.

AVEVA will deliver its proprietary AVEVA Everything3D (AVEVA E3D), AVEVA Diagrams, AVEVA Electrical, and AVEVA laser data software to capture Tupras’s existing assets as well as create as-built design documents and schematic products to help Tupras meet the refinery revamp and modification project schedules, AVEVA said.

The technology package will result in an accurate digital asset for Tupras that directly reflects its physical refining assets, which will aid current modernization activities as well as future operations and maintenance projects at the refineries, according to Dave Wheeldon, chief technology officer and head of engineering and design systems for AVEVA.

A value of the contract was not disclosed.

Tupras recently has undertaken a host of modernization and upgrading projects to improve operations at its Turkish refining operations, which include the Izmit and Izmir refineries, each with a crude processing capacity of 11 million-tonnes/year (tpy), as well as the 5 million-tpy Kirikkale refinery and 1.1 million-tpy Batman refinery.

During 2013, Tupras invested $1.2 billion in 83 small and medium-scale projects aimed at increasing productivity, efficiency, safety, and profitability at the refineries, with total capital investments in refinery improvement activities in 2006-15 projected to amount to nearly $5.5 billion, Tupras said in its 2013 annual disclosure to shareholders.

The centerpiece of the company’s refinery investments is the $2.7 billion residuum upgrading project (RUP) under way at the Izmit refinery. Initiated in 2008, RUP is designed to equip the plant to process high-sulphur fuel oil and other excess residual products into higher-value clean fuels that meet Euro 5 standards, according to Tupras.

The project, which upon completion will boost the Izmit refinery’s Nelson complexity index to 14.5 from 7.8, also will enable Tupras’s other refineries to achieve product flexibility and optimization as those plants increase their capacity utilization to supply additional raw feedstocks for Izmit, the company said.

In addition to auxiliary units and installations at Izmit, RUP will include the following major units:

• A 7,500-cu m/d (cmd) (47,000-b/d) vacuum distillation unit.

• An 8,200-cmd (52,000-b/d) delayed coker.

• An 8.000-cmd (50,000-b/d) hydrocracker.

• A 1,200-cmd (7,500-b/d) naphtha hydrogenation unit.

• A 4,000-cmd (25,000-b/d) diesel desulfurization unit.

• A 160,000-normal cu m/hr hydrogen unit.

• A 440-tonnes/day (3,200-b/d) sulfur unit.

• A 120.36-Mw integrated cogeneration power plant.

• A 26,400-cmd (166,000-b/d) amine regeneration unit.

As of June, overall progress on RUP had reached about 97%, with 100% of engineering work completed and field construction and assembly work nearly 91% done, Tupras told investors in August.

Tupras expects to complete full construction on the project during November, the company said.