The Hindu Business Line : IOC commissions hydrogen unit at Panipat refinery

In a statement issued here, the company said, "The HGU was commissioned last weekend, as part of the ongoing refinery expansion project to double its capacity from 6 to 12 million tonnes per annum (mtpa)."

With a capacity of 1,40,000 tonnes per annum, it was the largest hydrogen unit in the country and also the largest plant in the world licensed by Haldor Topsoe of Denmark, the company claimed. Larsen & Toubro has constructed the unit on lump-sum turnkey basis, with Engineers India Ltd as project management consultants.

Other units: Commissioning activities of other major units of the Rs 4,300-crore refinery expansion project are in full swing, the statement said.

Among these, the diesel hydro-treater is scheduled to go on stream this month-end, while the hydrocracker would be commissioned next month, it said. The crude and vacuum distillation units and the delayed coker unit would also be kick-started progressively to enable the entire capacity-doubling project to go online in three to four months.

According to Mr Jaspal Singh, Director (Refineries), Indian Oil, "Doubling of the refining capacity at Panipat will be a major step towards enhancing petroleum product availability in the high-demand north and northwest regions of the country."

He expressed confidence that it would also improve the company's profitability significantly in the current scenario of robust refining margins.

The board has already approved further expansion of the refinery to 15 mtpa, Mr Singh said.

Major hub: Indian Oil plans to expand the capacity at Panipat and turn it into major refining-cum-petrochemicals hub is fast taking concrete shape in the form of two major grassroots projects, he added.

The first one is an integrated world-scale facility for production of paraxylene/purified terephthalic acid (PTA), the building block for the polyester industry, being set up at a cost of Rs 5,100 crore and scheduled for commissioning early next year. The second is a world-scale naphtha cracker with downstream polymer units for production of linear low-density polyethylene , high-density polyethylene , polypropylene and the specialty chemical mono ethylene glycol used in synthetic fibre production along with PTA.

The project will be completed by 2007-08, he said.

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