Project ISAR at Bayernoil Refinery: New Site Structure

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Cordoba, Argentina)--The 240,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) Bayernoil Refinery, located in the German region of Bavaria and owned by Bayernoil Raffineriegesellschaft mbH (Vohburg, Germany)--a joint venture of four different companies: OMV AG (OTC:OMVKY) (Vienna, Austria) (45%), Ruhr Oel GmbH (25%), Agip Deutschland GmbH (20 %) and Deutsche BP AG (10 %)--used to be composed of three different interconnected locations that worked as one refinery: Ingolstadt, Vohburg and Neustadt. However, a big transformation took place when the 300 million-euro ISAR (Initiative zur Standortsicherung, Anlagenoptimierung und Rentabilitatssteigerung) project took place. The undertaking aimed to optimize the refinery's facilities in the area and increase the profitability of the Vorhburg and Neustadt plants for future tasks.

After the ISAR project was launched in August 2005, it was determined by the owner and operational company that the continuation of the three locations with the past technical configuration was not longer profitable. Therefore, dramatic measures were taken in order to achieve the project's goals.

One of the main goals was the design and construction of three new units for the Neustadt location: a new 48,000-BBL/d hydrocracker, a 160-ton-per-day Claus unit and a steam reformer for hydrogen production. The modifications were implemented during the 26-day plant overhaul that took place from April 14, 2008, to May 9, 2008. Throughout the duration of the shutdown, all the remaining processing units in the plant were revamped. Neustadt plant is now exceptionally flexible and ready for the extraction of low-sulfur jet fuel, diesel fuel and light fuel oil, as well as the appropriate refinery components such as hydrogen generation or sulphur recovery.

Furthermore, as part of the project's evaluations were carried out, authorities to close the Ingolstad site of Bayernoil Refinery, a plant that mostly worked on the production and refinement of gasoline products and did not process crude oil. This decision was reached after different assessments stated that the export of gasoline from this site was not economically viable.

The site was dismantled and the nine processing units were sold to the new 96,000-BBL/d Cals Refinery in Haldia, India, which will start operating at the end of 2010. The traded unites were: a fluid catalytic cracking unit, a thermal catalytic cracker, a naphtha recovery unit, a mid-distillation unit, a naphtha desulfurization unit, a unifier, a liquefied petroleum gas unit and two Claus units. After 43 years of production, the site stopped working, and all 170 workers were transferred to the other two locations.

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