IOC lets contract for clean-fuels projects at Indian refineries

Indian Oil Corp. Ltd. (IOC) has let a contract to Honeywell UOP LLC to provide pressure-swing adsorption (PSA) technology for supply of high-quality hydrogen at five refineries as part of the operator’s effort to produce clean-burning fuels complying with the Indian government’s strict Bharat Stage VI (BS-VI, equivalent to Euro 6) environmental standards.

As part of the contract, Honeywell UOP will deliver PSA units to IOC’s 13.7 million-tonne/year Koyali refinery at Vadodara in India’s western state of Gujarat, the 15 million-tpy Panipat refinery and petrochemical complex in Haryana north of New Delhi, and the 8 million-tpy Mathura refinery in the northwestern region of the country, the service provider said.

Alongside the units at Koyali, Panipat, and Mathura, Honeywell UOP’s scope of work will include upgrading existing hydrogen plants with its proprietary Polybed PSA technology at IOC’s 7.5 million-tpy Haldia refinery in the district of Purba Medinipur, West Bengal, the 1 million-tpy Guwahati refinery in Assam, and the Koyali refinery in Gujarat.

Together, the six projects will generate 166,000 tpy of new hydrogen capacity, representing an almost 30% increase for IOC, Honeywell UOP said.

Scheduled for completion by yearend 2019 to meet the government’s aggressive delivery schedule for BS-VI emissions standards, the project’s annual yield of additional hydrogen will have a value of about $400 million for IOC, the service provider said.

The six projects awarded under this contract come as part of the operator’s broader BS-VI quality improvement program for all its refineries, which now under way and collectively slated for startup by September 2019, will require a total investment of about 166 billion rupees, IOC said on its web site.

Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].