Gazprom Neft advances Moscow refinery revamp

Russian oil producer JSC Gazprom Neft has commissioned a newly reconstructed and refurbished sulfur-recovery unit at its 12.15 million tonne/year Moscow refinery.

With a total production capacity of 2.5 tonnes/hr, the almost fully automated unit enables the refinery to produce commercial sulfur in up to 5-mm granules as opposed to the site’s former and more energy-intensive process of block sulfur production, Gazprom Neft said.

The upgraded unit, which includes a production management system for production, warehousing, and dispatch, has helped to lower production losses, enhance production quality, and reduce emissions from the refinery by seventyfold compared with a 2013 modification that increased the plant’s hydrogen sulfide production volumes by 19%, the company said.

The sulfur plant revamp comes as part of the second phase of Gazprom Neft’s full reconstruction and modernization program for the Moscow refinery during 2013-20 (OGJ Online, Dec. 2, 2013).

Gazprom Neft completed the first stage of the Moscow modernization in July 2013 with the start-up of catalytic cracking and light-naphtha isomerization units that enabled the plant to begin production of gasoline meeting low-sulfur Euro 5 standards (OGJ Online, July 19, 2013).

The company also recently began a project to improve the efficiency of the refinery’s furnaces (OGJ Online, Aug. 26, 2014).

Gazprom Neft said it expects to have spent more than $4 billion by 2020 on the modernization program, the next stage of which will include projects to improve refining yield and increase production of light oil products.

Once completed, the modernization program will increase overall design capacity of the refinery to 18.15 million tpy (OGJ Online, May 7, 2013).