Chile's Aconcagua Refinery De-rated after Early October Fire

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The continuous generation unit and hydrocracking Unit 1 at an Aconcagua refinery, where a fire killed one worker and injured three others on October 9, 2007, are offline, and the refinery has been de-rated. The refinery is in Concon, about 90 miles from the capital of Santiago.

Enap, Chile's state-owned oil company, has three refineries in the country: Aconcagua, Bio Bio and Gregorio. The Aconcagua refinery in Concon, which was inaugurated in 1955, has a total production capacity of 18,000 cubic meters per day.

The fire, which was triggered when an air cooler connected to a stripper in the reforming unit's desulfurizer broke, caused the refinery's continuous catalyst regeneration (CCR) and hydrogen units to go offline. Enap authorities have not shut down all of the processing units. Topping 1 and Vacuum 1 were not shut down; Topping 2, Vacuum 2 and Alkylation were in the process of restarting October 10, 2007, without any reported inconveniences. The Diesel Hydrotreater is online. For more details, see related October 12, 2007, article - Fire at Chilean Refinery Kills One, Injures Three.

According to Aconcagua refinery authorities, damage in the CCR unit due to the fire in the desulfurizer of the reformer is greater than they thought. Some changes to the unit are planned in order to temporarily transform it into a naphtha hydrotreater. Authorities said they need to produce fuel and cannot have the refinery's continuous catalyst regeneration unit down for three months, which is how long repairs are expected to take. They are working with UOP in order to adapt the CCR unit, which is expected to be running as a naphtha hydrotreater by the end of October. Meanwhile, Enap will call for bids for the acquisition of the necessary equipment for the CCR repair. The refinery has an external hydrogen plant in which hydrogen is provided by an outsourced Chilean company. This plant cannot provide the necessary hydrogen for all of the refinery's units and it is generally reinforced by hydrogen produced by CCR; however, since the continuous catalyst regeneration is offline, there is not enough hydrogen. As a result, the hydrocracking unit was shut down and will remain offline until CCR starts running as a naphtha hydrotreater unit. The remaining 14 processing units at the plant are operational, but the refinery has been de-rated to approximately 60% of its normal capacity. With the temporary transformation of the CRR unit, Enap authorities expect to be able to keep the country's fuel supply at normal levels.

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