Petrobras taps Topsoe for refinery plant
30 Nov 2011
London – Topsoe has signed an agreement with Petrobras for the supply of critical equipment and materials for two SNOX plants. The plants will be installed at the new RNEST grass roots refinery in Pernambuco, Brazil. The supply covers internals for 80 WSA condensers for condensation of sulphuric acid, 8 units for acid mist control and a complete acid system.
The SNOX plants will clean the off gases from three boilers in the refinery that supplies electricity and steam for internal use. The boilers are fired with heavy fuel oil and petcoke. Based on catalytic processes the SNOX technology converts sulphur dioxide to industrial grade sulphuric acid and NOx to harmless nitrogen.
In addition to treating the boiler flue gases, the Claus plant tail gases, the amine gases containing hydrogen sulphide and the SWS gases containing ammonia will also be treated in the plants.
The plants are designed for possible elimination of the Claus plants, which then means that all sulphur compounds in the refinery are converted into sulphuric acid.
The two plants will be installed in parallel and will each treat up to 650,000 Nm3/h of flue gas while producing up to 750 MTPD of sulphuric acid. In addition to the production of sulphuric acid up to 100 ton/hour of high pressure steam will also be exported from the plants to the refinery steam grid.
The contract for basic engineering was signed with Petrobras earlier and has already been executed. The supply of equipment will take place during the coming 16 months, and start-up of the SNOX plants is planned for 2013.
