ENAP's Aconcagua Refinery Preparing for Start-Up of New Delayed Coker Unit

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Plant authorities at Chilean state-run oil company ENAP's Concon Aconcagua refinery are preparing for the start-up of a new delayed coker, engineered and constructed by Foster Wheeler Iberia SA (Madrid,Spain), a subsidiary of Foster Wheeler Limited (NASDAQ:FWLT) (Clinton, New Jersey).

The third sulfur recovery unit, which was part of the delayed coker addition project, came online April 15 and has been processing without inconveniences. For more details, see related April 9, 2008, article - Enap's Aconcagua Refinery Preparing for Start-Up of New Sulfur Recovery Unit.

ENAP has three refineries in the country: Aconcagua, Bio Bio and Gregorio. The Aconcagua, which began operation in 1955, has a total production capacity of 18,000 cubic meters per day.

According to plant officials, the heating-up process of the new delayed coker, which has a processing capacity of 20,000 barrels per day,. is currently being performed. The naphtha hydrotreater will be receiving naphtha and diesel fuel from the new unit. SRU 2, which was kept on standby mode, is to be restarted on June 28 and will be kept online together with SRU3 to support the Delayed Coker.

The gas oil hydrotreater remains offline. A planned maintenance stoppage of 13 mechanical days, which began on May 27 in order to change bends in the unit's reaction circuits, was set to be finished by June 10; however, several corroded exchanger tubes were found, delaying the date of restarting the unit.

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