The British Petrogas is carrying out a large-scale modernization project at the Turkmenbashi Complex of Oil Refineries (TCOR) in Turkmenistan. The scope of the partnership is the imple-mentation of an effluent water treatment plant
Turkmenistan, a country that very few people can easily locate on a map, is now on the cover pages of business magazines: the Central Asian country sits on some of the world’s largest natural gas and oil reserves.
Turkmenistan, with proven natural gas reserves of approximately 265 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), is the sixth largest natural gas reserve holder in the world. However, a lack of adequate infra-structure, along with geographical distance from buyers and other factors, have hampered the country’s efforts to export hydrocarbons in the past.
The country now aims to triple its crude-processing capacity by 2030. Turkmen government officials have said the country hopes to boost its oil-processing capacity to 400,000 bpd in 2020, 440,000 bpd in 2025 and 600,000 bpd in 2030. This will be accomplished by increasing the capacity of its existing oil refineries and building three new refineries by 2030.
The Turkmenbashi refinery, located on the Krasnovodsk Gulf of the Caspian Sea, is one of Turkmenistan’s two oil-processing facilities. Capable of handling around 120,000 bpd, it accounts for more than half of the country’s total throughput capacity of 200,000-220,000 bpd.
Turkmen authorities launched the latest round of modernization work at the Turkmenbashi refinery in May 2012; South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering had been chosen to implement a US$534 million modernisation project at the refinery.
A Very Qualified EPC Contractor
In late 2013 London-listed PetroGas LLP has been selected by Turkemnbashi Complex of Oil Refineries as the EPC contractor for a vast rehabilitation program including the reconstruction of water supply, petrochemical plants and the construction of a modern waste water treat-ment plant.
Founded in 1998, PetroGas is specialised in the construction and rehabilitation of infrastruc-tures in the oil and gas sector. In particular PetroGas implements projects including EPIC (engineering, procurement, installation and commissioning), construction of pipelines, on-shore and offshore, compressing and pumping stations, oil and gas treatment plants, tank farms and offshore oil and gas structures. PetroGas is headquartered in London, UK with facilities in Ukraine, UAE, Russia, Turkmenistan.
For the waste water treatment plant PetroGas decided to partner with Cannon Artes Ingegne-ria, a well-known name in the Oil & Gas sector. PetroGas, who are already very much accus-tomed to the ambient conditions in Turkmenistan, will take care of the land clearing, execution of civil works, mechanical installation, electrical and instrumental wiring and cabling, automa-tion of the entire system as well as the site services including commissioning and start-up.
Cannon Artes Ingegneria will focus on the technological part while providing the overall process design and the detailed engineering of the skid-mounted units: pre-fabrication of the critical equipment will be done in Cannon’s own factory in Salerno, Italy.
One of the World’s Largest WWT Plants
The effluent treatment plant has an overall capacity in excess of 1,000 m3/h, among the largest industrial waste water treatment (WWT) in the world. It is arranged on four WWT trains, a mobile sludge dehydration unit and a sanitary water treatment system.
But capacity is not the sole challenge. In order to meet extremely stringent limitations on the concentration of various chemicals species in the treated water outlet, each train has been designed to incorporate an oil separation section, a biological oxidation and a tertiary treat-ment.
Oil separation is featuring Coalescing Plates Interceptors (CPI) and dissolved air flotation.
The biological section will feature the “state-of-the-art” Membrane Bio-Reactor (MBR) technology that guarantees an extremely efficient oxidation of the organic substrate with a quantitative separation of all suspended solids, bacteria and viruses as only an ultrafiltration membrane can do.
The tertiary treatment, which is in most cases useless downstream an MBR unit since all solids and bacteria are removed there, is targeted to the selective removal of those organic mole-cules that are difficult to be biologically oxidized.
An advanced oxidation process with Hydrogen Peroxide injection, a specifically developed catalyser and an adsorption unit is therefore implemented to get rid of residual aromatics and toxic compounds down to ppb (parts-per-billion) levels.
Dida:
Skid units assembled in ARTES’ Oliveto Citra workshop, to be installed in Turkmenbashi refinery.
