HPCL lets contract for unit at Visakh refinery

Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd. has let a contract to TechnipFMC PLC to provide licensing, engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning services on a hydrogen generation unit (HGU) at its 8.3 million-tonne/year Vishakhapatnam (Visakh) refinery in Andhra Pradesh on India’s southeastern coast.

The contract covers project management, technology licensing, preparation of basic design, and engineering package, as well as detailed engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning, and performance-guarantee test run for the HGU, the service company said.

The HGU—which will include two 113,000-tpy trains and a pressure-swing adsorption unit with a hydrogen production capacity of 36,000 tpy—comes as part of HPCL’s brownfield Visakh refinery modernization project (VRMP), which proposes to expand refining capacity of the site to 15 million tpy, TechnipFMC said.

As part of the contract, TechnipFMC will equip the unit with its proprietary steam-reforming technology, including its branded TechnipFMC Parallel Reformer (TPR)—a convective, high-temperature heat exchange reformer—the combination of which reduces overall firing demand by taking high-temperature heat from effluent of the conventional reformer to supply heat needed for the TPR.

The unit design additionally will include a power-generation unit that uses excess steam, making the plant electrically self-sufficient, the service provider said.

TechnipFMC said this latest LEPCC contract—valued at $250-500 million—follows two HGUs the service company previously executed for HPCL.

A duration of the contract was not disclosed.

Alongside increasing the refinery’s crude processing capacity by 6.7 million tpy to 15 million tpy, HPCL’s VRMP intends to boost its production of low-sulfur fuels conforming to Euro 5 and Euro 6-quality standards (OGJ Online, June 11, 2018; Mar. 21, 2018; Jan. 5, 2018).

The VRMP currently is scheduled for mechanical completion in July 2020, HPCL said earlier this year.

Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].