Sannazzaro Refinery

The Sannazzaro refinery is located in the Turin-Milan-Genoa industrial triangle, in Italy’s Po Valley. The facility, which is owned by Eni, has a refining capacity of 180,000 barrels per day.

The refinery produces about 45 fuel varieties including LPG, high-purity butane, propane / butane mixtures, petroleum products, kerosene, diesel, jet fuel, bunker fuel, bitumen and sulphur. The output is exported principally to the north-west markets of Italy and Switzerland.

The Sannazzaro refinery, which is controlled by Eni’s Refining & Marketing division, was built in 1963 and has since undergone several expansions and upgrades.

Sannazzaro’s extension / developments

The Sannazzaro refinery was built with an annual capacity of five million tonnes. Its capacity doubled by 1975 and it was revamped during 1988-92.

In 2001 Eni opened a pilot plant to convert natural gas into liquid hydrocarbons using advanced conversion technology in partnership with IFP.

New proposals

Eni plans to add a new hydrocracker to the Sannazzaro refinery by 2012 through an investment of approximately $1.34bn. It will be the facility’s third hydrocracker and will have a steam-reforming unit and a sulphur unit with a capacity of 160t a day.

The Sannazzaro project was proposed in 2007 and is being appraised by the European Investment Bank, which will finance 40% of the costs. The unit will have a capacity of 23,000bpd and will process extra heavy crude with a high sulphur content.

The front end engineering design (FEED) of the unit was completed in 2008. Eni plans to achieve mechanical completion of the unit by March 2012 and begin operations by September.

Sannazzaro facilities

The Sannazzaro refinery initially had a fluid catalytic cracker, a hydrocracker and a visbreaking thermal conversion unit. Another hydrocracker unit was installed in June 2009. The second unit can convert 27,500bpd of vacuum gas oil into high quality fuels.

Residue from the visbreaking unit is converted into synthetic gas by the integrated gasification unit. The gas is fed to a power plant owned by Eni at Ferrera Erbognone.

In addition, the refinery has two topping plants, two reforming plants and three distillate de-sulphurisation plants. The facilities installed make the refinery flexible to process a variety of feedstock.

Output and connection

The Sannazzaro facility can produce 3.3 million tonnes of petrol, 1.2 million tonnes of jet fuel and 3.4 million tonnes of diesel a year.

The heavy residues produced at the facility are processed at Eni’s gasifying plant.

The refinery receives oil from the Central European pipeline, which connects the Genoa terminal and the Swiss-French canton. About 90% of the crude fed to the refinery comes from the Genoa terminal.

The oil pipeline from Villafortuna oilfields supplies 10% of the crude.

Technology at Sannazzaro

The second hydrocracker installed in 2009 uses Chevron Lummus Global isocracking technology and catalysts. The technology involves processing in two stages to improve the quality of refining.

The third hydrocracker, which will be brought onstream in 2012, will use Eni Slurry Technology (EST). It will be Eni’s first EST industrial unit. The technology uses homogenous isothermal slurry reactors and a non-ageing catalyst dispersed in nano materials. EST helps in full conversion of heavy feedstock in a cost-effective manner and leaves no residues.

The heavy-wall reactors will be the world’s largest and weigh 2,000t each. Advanced techniques such as Cr-Mo-Vanadium welding will be used to manufacture the reactors in order to prevent corrosion.

Sannazzaro contracts

Snamprogetti and Saipem were awarded the FEED contract for Sannazzaro’s new hydrocracker unit. GE Oil & Gas was contracted in February 2009 to supply the unit’s reactors, which are expected to be delivered in the first quarter of 2011.

Siirtec Nigi was the EPC contractor and technology supplier for the sulphur recovery unit at Sannazzaro. The turnkey contract was awarded by Eni in August 2006.

Oyster Progetti was subcontracted by Siirtec for piping, civil works, mechanical, electrical, instrumentation and process control for the unit.

Other contractors appointed for several upgrade and maintenance works include Sices Group, Cortem, Eletra Progetti and Cemp.

Sices Group carried out mechanical, insulation and painting works for different units at the refinery.

Cortem supplied lighting fixtures, control stations, poles, fittings and panel boards to Snamprogetti in 2004 for Sannazzaro’s desulphurisation FCC unit.

Eletra Progetti supplied plant control systems several times to the refinery. Cemp upplied flame-proof motors for various units at the Sannazzaro refinery.