Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), run by India’s corporate head-honcho Mukesh Ambani, has announced that the planned Maintenance and Inspection (M&I) shutdown that had been previously undertaken for the Fluidized Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCCU) of the DTA Refinery at Jamnagar has now been completed and the unit is set to resume functions post its shutdown for a period of nearly 5 weeks starting from 07 February 2011.
The FCC unit of the refinery was shutdown in the month of February. In its official statement, RIL sources have informed that a number of initiatives implemented during the above shutdown would lead to significant improvement in reliability and overall performance of the Unit including product yields.
The FCC converts vacuum gas oil into light value-added products like liquefied petroleum gas, gasoline-blending components and diesel. Every few years, the unit is shutdown in order to overhaul the systems and functionalities for improved performance. This M&I was carried out after five years of continuous function of FCCU. Most oil refineries across India go into maintenance in the March-April bracket so as to rev up their processes and check for abnormalities in operations.
In its annual report for the 2009-2010 fiscal quarters (April-March), Reliance said the refineries achieved peak capacity utilization rate of 120 % during the period. The two Refineries at Jamnagar Complex are planned to operate at maximum crude processing capacity i.e. 1.3 Million bbls per day during this period. All other major secondary processing units at Jamnagar Complex are also planned to operate at normal capacity including FCCU of SEZ Refinery. The fluid catalytic cracker (FCC) of about 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) is expected to resume full functions by Monday evening.Labels: Mukesh Ambani, Reliance Industries Limited, RIL