FCCU at PDVSA's Willemstad Isla Refinery to Remain Offline for Six Weeks

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--PDVSA will continue with maintenance repairs on the air blower and compressor of the 325,000-barrel-per-day (BBL/d) Willemstad Isla refinery's 55,000 BBL/d fluid catalytic cat cracker unit (FCCU) in Curacao. The unit was initially shut down on April 9 when the first refinery-wide power outage occurred. Its restart has been estimated to take place in six weeks.

The outage occurred as several units from the HDX Complex were reaching normal production rates after a 50-day planned maintenance shutdown. The turnaround involved eight units: naphtha hydrotreater, mild hydrocracker, lubes hydrotreatment, polymerization plant, platforming and diesel hydrotreatment. The reformer unit had to be shut down a week before the turnaround start date because of a boiler problem. For more details, view related April 10, 2008, article - Power Outage Forces All Units Offline at PDVSA's Willemstad Isla Refinery. By the time the second power outage occurred on April 14, the feed cracker 2, thermal cracker 2, CD3, CD2 B and HV7 units had already been restarted at minimum rates. For details, view related April 14, 2008, article - PDVSA's Willemstad Isla Refinery Experiencing Another Power Outage.

After several inspections, plant officials decided to keep the FCCU offline for six weeks more to solve major problems in the air blower, which has to be dismounted and sent off-site for major repair work. The FCCU's compressor also remains offline. The alkylation unit will be kept offline, along with feed cracker 1, CD2 A, LPG and Merox until the FCCU is restarted. Thermal cracker 2 remains online with feed cracker 2. Generally, the gas produced by thermal cracker 2 goes to the FCCU; however, since it remains offline, it is derived to the flare, and more pollution is being generated.

CD3 will increase its capacity to 21,000 tons per day to take up the slack for the CD2 A while this unit remains offline. The mild hydrocracker unit is being restarted. Even though operation supervisors have already tested SRU 1 and found that it is in optimal conditions to restart, it remains offline because of the lack of H2S. The tail gas compressor and tail gas stabilizer from the HDL Complex are being restarted so as to recover more H2S. Once there's more H2S, the SRU1 will come online, and the remaining sulfur recovery units will be kept on standby mode. The pelletizer, which remains offline, will be restarted once the SRU1 is back processing. Thermal cracker 1 is reprocessing slop products generated during the power outages.

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