New Visbreaker Unit Confirmed for Poland's Plock Refinery

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Poland's biggest oil refiner, state-owned PKN Orlen (WSE:PKN) (Plock, Poland) has approved a $256 million project to add a new visbreaking unit at its 277,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) integrated refining complex in Plock, Poland.

The visbreaking unit is one of a number of key overhaul projects that Industrial Info is tracking at the Plock refinery. The new unit will increase the yield of light products: gasoline and diesel oil. Commercial operation is expected to start by the end of 2022 and will add more than $100 million per year to the refinery's sales.

"We are optimising production in line with our stated strategy," explained Daniel Obajtek, president of the PKN ORLEN management board. "We are closely monitoring the macro environment. It is the reason why we are growing our core business lines -- oil refining, petrochemicals, and power generation. The key to success is to accelerate investment processes so that we are able to start earning profits as soon as possible. The visbreaker at the Płock refinery is a case in point. It will help us effectively respond to the growing demand for high-margin products, while strengthening our position on the competitive international market."

The visbreaker will take vacuum residue, which has so far been used to make heavy fuel oils and asphalt, and process it into high-margin gasoline and diesel oil products. The company said it will "help the refinery to achieve higher conversion and increase fuel yields per barrel of oil by several percentage points."

The unit will be built under a visbreaking licence from Shell/CB&I NEDERLAND B.V. by a consortium of KTI Poland S.A. (consortium leader) and IDS-BUD S.A. (consortium member). PKN ORLEN has signed a turnkey contract for the design, procurement, construction, installation, commissioning and startup of the unit. The company already has similar visbreaking units at its Czech and Lithuanian refineries.

The Plock refinery is also home to a number of other improvement projects, including the upgrade of the hydrocracking unit. Once it is completed, the annual diesel oil output will increase by 100,000 tonnes. A diesel hydrotreater is being modernised with a view to increasing diesel oil production by 150,000 tonnes. These two projects, planned to be completed later this year, are expected to add $51 million to total annual revenues.

In related news, PKN ORLEN has licensed the UOP Q-Max and Phenol 3G technologies from Honeywell UOP (Des Plaines, Illinois) to produce 200,000 metric tons per annum of phenol at the Płock Refinery. Honeywell will also supply basic engineering design services, plus key equipment, catalysts and adsorbents and technical services. It will supply a cumene unit and a phenol unit with alpha methyl styrene hydrogenation. When completed, the new complex will boost PKN's market position in high-margin petrochemicals including phenol and acetone.

Last September, Industrial Info reported that PKN ORLEN awarded a contract to Honeywell UOP to provide its proprietary MaxEne process technology to the Plock Refinery to boost production of ethylene and aromatics. For additional information, see September 23, 2019, article--Poland's PKN Orlen Contracts Honeywell to Boost Production at Plock Refinery.

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