WORLD’S LARGEST SINGLE CRUDE DISTILLATION EQUIPMENT
Nigeria’s Dangote Refinery claims to have world’s largest single run distillation equipment designed for crude oil processing
weighs about 2250 MT (metric tonnes) excluding internal trays weight which is approximately 536 MT
111.2 metre length, 14.036 metres width and 13.752 metres height
Crude capacity of 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day
The Refinery unit was manufactured by Sinopec in china is the primary unit processor of crude oil into fuels.
Sinopec in china took 14 months to build the equipment and another 8 months to bring it down o Nigeria.
They decided to ship it from china to nigeria to avoid of being damage and to avoid traffic congestion.
The crude distillation column works on the principle of fractional distillation leading to the separation of various components in mixtures on the basis of different boiling points .
The unit head explained that the crude oil mixture containing various chemical components with different molecular weights ,sizes and boiling temperatures enters from the top of the distillation column with inlet temperature of 165 degree celsius ,gradually increasing to 357 degree celsius at the bottom of the column.
During this downward passage of cool crude oil interacts with it’s hot vapors moving upwards at the bubble cap trays (internal stages within the column) which increases the contact and surface area within the column.
Due to the mass transfer between the liquid crude and it’s vapors as well as different temperatures maintained across the column the hot vapors constantly looses heat during it’s upward moment .when the vapors reach the height within the column where it’s boiling point becomes equal to the temperature of the column at that height .it condenses to form a liquid
The liquid then collects on various trays in the column at different heights from where it is extracted out of the column. the separated fractions are mainly naphtha, jet fuel , gasoline, kerosene, gas oil and diesel.
Dangote refinery stats when all installations completed ,they will produce Euro-V quality gasoline and diesel as well as jet fuel and polypropylene.
Sulzer’s mass transfer technology supports development of Dangote refinery .
In addition to featuring the world’s largest single crude distillation column, Dangote refinery will have a number of processing units containing more than 65 columns and requiring more than 15 static mixers .
Sulzer has designed and supplied internals for all of the refinery’s columns. these are now being installed under the guidance of Suler’s engineers and the refinery is estimated to be operational by the early 2020.
This refinery with capacity 6,50,000 barrels per day is higher than the total petrol demand of Nigeria.
Dangote oil refinery company is training about 150 young Nigerian engineers in refinery operations in Mumbai ,India in preparation to take-off of the refinery .
According to the reports, The project is expected generate over 9,500 direct and 25,000 indirect jobs.
