Rompetrol completes upgrade of Petromidia refinery’s delayed coker

Rompetrol Rafinare SA—jointly owned by Kazakhstan’s state-owned JSC NC KazMunayGas (KMG) subsidiary KMG International NV (54.63%) and Romania’s Ministry of Economy, Energy & Business Environment (44.7%)—has completed modernization works on the delayed coking unit (DCU) of its more than 5-million tonne/year Petromidia refinery in Năvodari, Romania, on the Black Sea.

Implemented during the refinery’s 2-month scheduled major turnaround that ran through mid-May and finalized as of July 17, the DCU project involved installation of a new drilling and cutting system for petroleum coke, as well as automation of the unit’s production flow, KMG said in a statement.

Part of the operator’s broader investment in the site-wide scheduled maintenance event, the DCU’s $13-million modernization project included full replacement of the unit’s existing system with a new, fully automated one that reduces the coke-cutting cycle by about 30 minutes, lowers electricity consumption, and enables all actions to be performed semi-automatically, and automatically, and remotely.

Alongside improving DCU performance and reducing its impacts to the surrounding environment, the upgrading project also increases the degree of protection and safety for refinery employees and operators, KMG said.

“Through these works, we manage to bring the [DCU] to a new technological stage, [serving as] an important [step] in terms of efficiency, reliability, and operational safety,” said Florian Pop, Rompetrol Rafinare’s general manager.

Now in operation for nearly 40 years, the DCU previously underwent a more than $50-million extensive modernization in 2013, as well as more recent modernization works in 2020 involving installation of a new light-diesel recovery system at the unit’s fractionation column (OGJ Online, Aug. 17, 2020).

In addition to the DCU upgrading project, this year’s turnaround at Petromidia included a more than $25-million investment on works to changeout reactors in the refinery’s middle distillate hydrotreating unit and replace main equipment in the site’s hydrogen plant, KMG confirmed.

Reconstruction works on the refinery's mild hydrocracking unit also were completed during the turnaround, the operator said in May.

The overall cost of the 2024 turnaround—which began Mar. 8 and was concluded as of May 13—was about $85 million, the company said.