Clean fuels In New Zealand
5 Mar 2003
Foster Wheeler has been awarded a contract by The New Zealand Refining Company (NZRC) to support NZRC in producing an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) sanction package for the New Zealand Future Fuels project.
The project, located at Whangarei, North Island in New Zealand, involves modifying New Zealand's sole refinery to produce low-sulphur diesel fuel and low-benzene, -sulphur and -aromatics gasoline. The project will be executed by Foster Wheeler's Thailand office, one of four Foster Wheeler execution centres in the Asia Pacific region.
The project, which has an investment value of more than $75 million, is split into two stages. Foster Wheeler has been awarded Stage 1, which requires supporting NZRC in producing an EPC sanction package from a number of separate basic design engineering packages (BDEPs). Award of the contract for Stage 2, covering engineering, procurement and construction, is expected later this year. Start-up of the new facilities is scheduled for mid-2005.
The clean-fuels project includes new processing units for hydrodesulphurisation, benzene removal and hydrogen separation, as well as a revamp of existing facilities. Foster Wheeler is working on the refinery to ensure compliance with forthcoming changes to New Zealand's national transport fuel specifications.
These require reduced sulphur in automotive diesel fuel (50 ppm or less) and reduced benzene (one percent by volume), sulphur and aromatics content in motor gasoline by 2006.
The refinery currently produces 106,000 barrels per stream day. Expected throughput for the new units is as follows: hydrodesulphuriser - 3,600 tonnes per stream day (t/sd), and benzene removal unit - 2,900 t/sd.
