ADNOC commissions delayed coking project at Ruwais

Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC) subsidiary ADNOC Refining (formerly Takreer) has commissioned a delayed coking unit as part of the operator’s carbon black and coker project (CBCP) at its more than 800,000-b/d Ruwais refining complex in the UAE.

Designed to extract maximum value from bottom-of-the-barrel heavy oils and slurry, the coker project will allow ADNOC Refining to recover highly specialized grades of carbon black and calcined coke to create higher value from what would otherwise be used for low-value fuel oil as well as potentially remove the need to import costly raw materials, ADNOC said.

Reaching startup on Sept. 2, the CBCP will produce 430,000 tonnes/year of high-quality, anode-grade calcined coke and 40,600 tpy of two different grades of carbon black, the latter of which will the ADNOC-Borealis AG jointly held Abu Dhabi Polymers Co. Ltd.’s (Borouge) integrated polyolefins complex in Ruwais will use to produce a range of products, including high-pressure water and gas pipes, steel-pipe coatings and linings, and standalone piping.

ADNOC confirmed the project comes as part of its broader multibillion-dollar downstream program announced earlier in the year to increase crude processing flexibility, improve margins, and produce additional feedstocks and additives for its refining and petrochemical businesses that will created the world’s largest integrated refining and petrochemicals hub in Ruwais by yearend 2025 (OGJ Online, May 23, 2018).

Alongside increasing ADNOC Refining’s crude processing capacity by more than 65%, or 600,000 b/d, to 1.5 million b/d with the addition of a third refinery, the $45-billion downstream program also will include construction of a new mixed-feed naphtha cracker to enable tripling petrochemical production capacity at Ruwais to 14.4 million tpy by 2025, according to ADNOC.

Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].