Unit Description
Alexandria Petroleum Company have three distillation units with total capacity about 5 million tons per year. The very old distillation unit (1) with a capacity of 0.25 million tons per year is demolished due to safety reasons and high running costs.
Atmospheric Distillation Unit (2), ADU #2
Established in 1961 with refinement capacity of 1 million ton per year based on Ras Shokier crude oil. Designed by Techno-Export Company (Czech Republic).
Many modifications have been implemented:
- Revamp to increase capacity, improve product specifications and energy conservation.
- Replaced 1/3 of the main fractionation tower & its internals bubble cap trays.
- Add new water condensers.
- Rearranged the heat train of heat exchangers.
- Revamped the desalter to increase salt removal efficiency (Howmmar - UK).
- Replaced old furnace with new vertical cylindrical one (Chiyoda - Japan).
- Replaced control system with new DCS (Rosemount - USA), then upgraded to Honeywell - USA.
After 44 years of operation, and due to previous modifications and preventative maintenance, the capacity of ADU#2 has been increased to about 1.68 million tons per year based on Western Desert Mixture crude oil.
Atmospheric Distillation Unit (3), ADU #3
Established in 1970 with refinement capacity of 1 million tons per year based on Ras Shokier crude oil. Designed by Techno-Export Company (Czech Republic). Many modifications have been implemented to increase capacity, improve products specifications and energy conservation.
- Changed burners from side burners to bottom ones.
- Replaced old compressors with two new compressors from Dresser Rand - UK.
- Revamped the desalter to increase salt removal efficiency (Howmmar - UK).
- Revamped furnace adding balanced draft system with a new stack (Kirchner - Italy).
- Replaced control system with a new Distributed Control System "DCS" by Yokogawa (2007).
- Completed basic engineering study to raise capacity by 25% (STP - Italy).
The previous modifications and preventative maintenance increased the capacity to about 1.5 million ton/year based on Western Desert Mixture crude oil.
Atmospheric Distillation Unit (4), ADU #4
Started in 1982 with a designed capacity of 1.84 million ton/year based on Light Arabian crude oil. Designed by Enppi - Egypt.
ADU#4 never processed Light Arabian crude oil and has to process Egyptian Balyieum crude oil with a large change in the percentage of products, so many modifications had to be implemented from the first day of operation to increase capacity, improve products specifications and energy conservation.
- Modification and rearrangement of heat train of heat exchangers.
- Revamped the desalter to increase salt removal efficiency (Howmmar - UK).
- Replaced control system with new DCS by Rosemount - USA, then upgraded to Honeywell - USA.
