Project File Kharg and Lavan Islands

Improved Environmental Footprint Heavy Crude Upgrading - Middle East

The intention is to build a new extra heavy crude refinery in the Northern Gulf. The refinery will employ a novel slurry catalyst technology called Heavy Residue Hydroconversion unit (HRH) to upgrade the crude feed oil, thereby increasing yield. The technology is particularly efficient for processing crudes from marginal oil fields.

The GSAe technological offering was challenged to recover this catalyst in addition to the vanadium and nickel that is present naturally in the heavy crude feed to the refinery. This has multiple benefits:

• • Minimising releases of toxic metal salts into the environment by recovery for use

• • Minimising OPEX on new catalytic metals

• • Providing separate and new income from the sales of vanadium and nickel products

In support of the HRH technology supplier GSAe carried out basic engineering design activities for the downstream units:

• • HP & LP Separators

• • Hydrogen Purification

• • GSAe

proprietary Catalyst Regeneration / Metals