MOSCOW (MRC) -- Honeywell has announced Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL), a public sector undertaking under the Indian Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, will use UOP technology to produce cleaner-burning diesel fuel in compliance with India’s BS-VI emission standards and increase crude oil conversion, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The Numaligarh Refinery Expansion Project (NREP) will facilitate economic development in the north-eastern states of India by expanding the region’s crude processing capacity from the present 3.0 million metric tons per year (MMtpy) to 9.0 MMtpy in Numaligarh, located in the Indian state of Assam.
The UOP Distillate Unionfining process will enable NRL to produce diesel that complies with India’s BS-VI emission standards, which were implemented last year. The process removes impurities to improve the quality of middle distillate feedstocks that meet increasingly stringent regulations for fuels such as diesel.
“This project with Numaligarh marks the first-ever UOP licensed process unit in an NRL refinery, and it’s the first grassroots diesel hydrotreating unit in India using a latest-generation UOP catalyst,” said Mike Banach, Managing Director, UOP India. “The Unionfining technology will help NRL increase crude processing capacity and comply with ever-stricter standards for diesel production.”
The NREP expansion is part of the Government of India’s Hydrocarbon Vision 2030 for the northeast Indian states. It also is integrated with a new crude oil pipeline from Paradip in Odisha to Numaligarh in Assam, and a product pipeline from Numaligarh to Siliguri in West Bengal where NRL has its own marketing terminal for product distribution.
As MRC reported earlier, in March 2021, Honeywell announced that Hengli Petrochemical Co. Ltd. successfully used Callidus burner technology from Honeywell UOP to minimize nitrogen oxide (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions in China, and reduce the impact of these emissions while ensuring safe and stable operations.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 576,270 tonnes in the first three month of 2021, up by 4% year on year. Low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) shipments increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market totalled 410,890 tonnes in January-March 2021, up by 56% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased.
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