Essar Oil commissions hydrogen manufacturing unit at Indian refinery

Essar Oil, a unit of Essar Energy, has commissioned a hydrogen manufacturing unit at its Vadinar refinery in the Indian state of Gujarat. This is the third new unit to be commissioned at the refinery as part of the phase I expansion of the facility’s capacity from 14 million tonnes per year to 18mmtpa.

Under the Rs8,310 crore ($1.62bn) expansion project, the company will also commission six additional units by March this year. Essar Oil will also execute an optimisation project at the refinery to further increase its capacity to 20mmtpa by September 2012.

The new hydrogen manufacturing unit, which is licensed by Haldor Topsoe and designed by UOP, has an installed capacity to generate 130kNm³ per hour of hydrogen gas. The unit will operate on six feedstock options including natural gas, saturated refinery fuel gas, saturated LPG, hydrotreated/stabilised naphtha and a blend of saturated LPG and hydrotreated naphtha.

Essar Oil also commissioned an amine regeneration unit at the Vadinar refinery this month.

Lalit Gupta, Essar Oil managing director and CEO, said that the operational readiness of the amine regeneration unit and the hydrogen manufacturing unit is essential to support the smooth functioning of two key expansion units, the diesel hydrotreater and the vacuum gas oil hydrotreater. The hydrogen manufacturing unit produces and supplies 99.9% pure hydrogen gas to the diesel hydrotreater and the vacuum gas oil hydrotreater for the hydrotreating process.

The Vadinar expansion project will double the refinery’s complexity to reach 11.8, up from 6.1.