The choice and application of the coking technology to process the heavy residue generated in crude processing will allow Grupa LOTOS to increase its product yields by more than 30% compared with other residue handling methods. Coking is a low-emission process, which is more efficient and more cost-effective than gasification or burning heavy residue in the CHP plant.
The choice and application of the coking technology to process the heavy residue generated in crude processing will allow Grupa LOTOS to increase its product yields by more than 30% compared with other residue handling methods. Coking is a low-emission process, which is more efficient and more cost-effective than gasification or burning heavy residue in the CHP plant.
The coking technology used in the system of process units built as part of the EFRA Project will ultimately enable the Company to obtain 300 kg of coke and about 700 kg of fuels from each tonne of the heavy residue.
Based on the comparative analyses they have carried out, LOTOS’ specialists have confirmed that coking will be the best choice for the refinery in terms of efficiency, energy intensity and cost of construction of the required installations. They have also taken into account the growing costs implied by the EU climate-related regulations. In the coking process, most of carbon dioxide will be captured in the ultimate product of the process (coke). In the planned coking installation, coke unloading will be handled in airtight conditions and will meet the applicable environmental standards. Out of the available methods to process and use the heavy residue (in practice heavy fuel oil), coking proved to offer the best economics, efficiency and environmental friendliness compared with the other solutions considered.
Visualization of the DCU installation
“The key issue for us was to eliminate from our crude processing the heavy residue, in particular heavy fuel oil, which generates negative margins (its prices are lower than the prices of crude). It also has a high content of sulfur and is not environmentally friendly,” said Grzegorz Błędowski, Grupa LOTOS’ EFRA Project Manager. The coking technology will enable us to improve our distillate yields, i.e. to obtain higher volumes of high-margin fuels from the same amount of crude, through the processing of heavy residue. We estimate that our refining margin will grow considerably, by about 2 dollars per barrel. The profits from selling an additional 900 thousand tonnes of fuels every year will tangibly improve the Company’s financial figures.
Another advantage of the coking installation is its flexibility: in the winter it can be used to process the entire heavy residue generated in the refinery, while in the summer it can be fed with imported heavy fuel oil, while some of the heavy residue is used in bitumen production. Thanks to these new solutions, the Company will not have to produce fuel oil, while production of bitumens may be continued or suspended depending on its economic efficiency. Globally, there are as many as 179 coking installations. They are characterised by high flexibility and relatively low investment expenditure. In the case of Grupa Lotos, additional advantages include:
-
the possibility to process all the heavy residues;
-
relatively low emissions of carbon dioxide and the possibility to obtain free CO2 emission allowances;
-
better utilisation of the existing production assets (HDS and MHC units, amine regeneration system, sour water stripper, Claus facility), i.e. better alignment of the technology used with the refinery’s existing configuration.
The entire coking project is characterised by good resilience to the fluctuations of market prices of crude. Moreover, the LOTOS refinery’s complexity ratio will improve to a level reported by the world’s best refineries. The complexity ratio, defining the complexity of a refinery’s configuration, is related to the crude conversion ratio. Its increase reflects growing volumes of high-margin products relative to the amount of crude processed. Implementation of the EFRA Project will enable the LOTOS Group to achieve world-class production standards and maintain its strong competitive position among European refineries. It will improve the Gdańsk refinery’s operating efficiency and margins without compromising the safety and stability of operation of all its installations.
Communications Office, Grupa LOTOS S.A., ul. Elbląska 135, 80-718 Gdańsk, Poland, tel. (+48) 58 308 87 31, (+48) 58 308 83 88, e-mail: media@grupalotos.pl