Unplanned Turnaround Under Way at French Total Gonfreville Refinery

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources Europe (Galway, Ireland)--Total Refining and Marketing, a division of Total SA (NYSE:TOT) (Paris, France), is performing an unplanned turnaround on a main unit of the 364,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) Gonfreville Refinery in France.

This refinery is the largest of Total's six refineries in France. Located in the city of Gonfreville in the Haute-Normandie region of northwestern France, it produces a wide range of products such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), naphtha, kerosene, fuel, solvent, bitumen and lubricants.

On May 9, 2011, at 7:45 p.m., a fire broke out in one of the furnaces of the 21,800-BBL/d vacuum distillation unit, known as DSV 5, forcing the unit to shut down. The unit is one of the smallest of four existing vacuum distillations units in the refinery, operating with the 32,000-BBL/d DSV 10; the 27,000-BBL/d DSV8, located in the Lubes and Bitumen Area; and the 21,000-BBL/d DSV 2, located in the Deep Conversion 2 Area.

The unit will remain offline until incident cause is established and repairs are completed. The incident has no negative impacts in the production rates of the refinery, and the other processing units continue as normal.

View Plant ID - 1036696

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