Air Products has unveiled an industrial gas complex within the Integrated Refinery Expansion Project (IREP) of the Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited’s (BPCL) Kochi Refinery located in Kochi in the Indian state of Kerala.
Image: The Kochi Industrial Gas Complex in Kerala, India. Photo: courtesy of Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.
The $400m build-own-operate (BOO) project, Kochi Industrial Gas Complex, is equipped to generate hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and steam.
Featuring a technologically-advanced HyCO plant, the complex is said to be an invaluable constituent of BPCL’s IREP to manufacture auto-fuels in compliance with Euro-IV/Euro-V specifications.
Air Products executive vice-president Dr Samir Serhan said: “Air Products is privileged to serve BPCL’s expansion needs at Kochi to provide significantly more high quality, cleaner-burning fuels.
“This world-class facility represents true project execution excellence and took more than 10 million man-hours to build without any safety incidents.”
Air Products said that industrial gases manufactured at the complex will help in increasing BPCL’s refining capacity from 190,000 to 310,000 barrels per day while producing cleaner fuels through upgraded fuel specification.
Air Products Middle East, India, Egypt and Turkey industrial gases president Richard Boocock said: “The Kochi Industrial Gas Complex houses one of the most efficient and flexible HyCO (hydrogen/carbon monoxide) plants in Air Products’ global plant fleet.
“This is a technologically-advanced plant, built using Air Products’ proprietary technology, incorporating state-of-the-art safety features which also deliver reliability and environmental performance.”
Earlier this year, Air Products agreed to build, own and operate a new syngas production facility in India for BPCL.
As part of the long-term agreement, Air Products will build the new syngas production facility at the BPCL’s Kochi Refinery located at Ambalamugal, near Kochi.
Featuring Air Products’ cryogenic gas separation technologies, the new facility will be equipped to produce a hydrogen/carbon monoxide syngas.
The resulting syngas will be supplied to the BPCL’s new Propylene Derivatives Petrochemical Project (PDPP), which is currently under development to serve the growing domestic market in India.
The Kochi Refinery, which is one of the BPCL’s two refineries in India, has a crude oil refining capacity of 15.5 million metric tons per annum (MMTPA).