Atlas Copco Rental to support the Nghi Son Refinery construction project with 100% oil-free air compressors during purging and drying phases

Nghi Son Refinery & Petrochemical Complex Project is located 260km away from Hanoi capital in Thanh Hoa Province, one of the biggest provinces in Vietnam.

The refinery has capacity to process 200,000 barrels of crude oil per day (equivalent to 10 million tons per year). It will produce LPG, RON 92, RON 95, jet fuel diesel and petrochemical products.

The Construction broke ground in 2013 and the project was jointly built by the JGCS consortium formed by international companies from Japan and South Korea. Commercial operation phase is to start in early 2017.

Our customer, Sungdo Engineering & Construction, was the lead contractor for SK engineering during construction of the A600 zone. Oil-free air was required in the final stage of construction of the catalyst tank for purging and drying it out before handing it over to SK engineering. The catalyst tank was 16.9 meters long, excluding top and bottom dome caps with a 7.2m diameter. 

Along with many challenges, several extra difficulties arose during this project:

• Logistics: the units had to be transported from our Thailand depot by sea and road. However, heavy storms caused floods preventing the units from being delivered by road, which eventually led to them being reloaded onto vessels and shipped to Hai Phong Port in North Vietnam. 
• Temporary import of used equipment: Vietnam’s law does not permit the import of used equipment on a temporary basis. Therefore special licenses had to be obtained. 
• Low temperatures: with ambient temperatures of 20 °C a dew point of -40 °C was hard to obtain from our dryers but we managed to achieve the required dew point. 
• High tie-in points: the height of the tie in points to the tanks meant that support structures had to be specially built to ensure safe conditions on site.