The Fortum Oil and Gas Oy (subsequently renamed to Neste Oil Corporation) Porvoo refinery at Kilpilahti, Finland, situated 30km east of Helsinki, undertook an upgrade and expansion of its diesel production facilities in August 2004. The expansion started on a 4.5ha site and required an investment of over €500m over a two-year period.
The Porvoo refinery has four production lines and more than 40 process units. The expansion of the refinery included construction of a new production line (PL4), a residual oil unit and a hydrogen production unit. The production line 4 has been producing diesel and the other two units have been producing renewable diesel since February 2007.
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The refinery employs 1,900 personnel. The expansion was undertaken in response to a perceived shortage of diesel for the consumer and commercial markets in north-western Europe (particularly Germany and France).
Heavy oil residue conversion unit at Porvoo refinery
The refinery introduced a new heavy residue conversion (HRC) unit (residual oil cracking unit), which produces sulphur-free high-quality diesel fuel. The capacity of the HRC unit is 41,800 barrels per day.
The HRC unit operates in a hydrogen atmosphere under high pressure and temperature and so a new hydrogen plant was also constructed at the refinery. The sulphur recovery and sour water treatment units were also refurbished (new sulphur silos and a pelletising unit were constructed in the truck loading station). There are only three other similar units in operation in Europe.
Details of the Porvoo refinery
The Porvoo refinery is one of the largest in Scandinavia, producing over 240,000 barrels a day with an annual capacity of 13 million tonnes.
Following the diesel project the overall capacity of the refinery remained the same, but it is capable of increasing the refining of very profitable products, such as sulphur-free diesel fuel (<10ppm). Neste’s diesel fuel production capacity at Porvoo is five million tonnes a year (85,000bpd).
The crude oil used in the Porvoo refinery is mainly REB (Russian Export Blend) and oil extracted from the North Sea resources, mainly carried in by tankers. Between one-and-a-half and two million tonnes are brought in by rail from the former Soviet Union, mainly from Russia.
The feedstocks (crude oil) and products (20 million tonnes combined) are discharged and loaded by more than 1,300 vessels a year at the Porvoo harbour. The majority diesel products provided to the domestic markets and exported are low-emission City Futura and City Diesel.
Contractors for the diesel expansion project at Neste Oil’s refinery
The main engineering contractor and project manager for the diesel production expansion project at the refinery was Neste Jacobs Oy (Neste Engineering is part of Neste Corporation’s oil sector division). Planning was carried out by several companies including Rintekno, JP Suunnittelu, PI Consulting and Jyvästek.
YIT Rakennus Oy was the main contractor for excavation and site preparation. YIT Corporation was selected for the mechanical installation contract, which involved the installation of piping and equipment for the residual oil and hydrogen units which form part of the production line, as well as a delivery of steel structures.
YIT also supplied underground process piping for the production line. The delivery included about 200km of process piping, the largest of which were about 1,200mm in diameter, over 3,000t in steel structures and the installation of about 550 process equipment items. The largest item to be installed weighed 360t. The thickness of the walls of the high-pressure pipes was up to 90mm. The latest technology welding was used, based on an automated narrow groove and hot wire technique, which YIT developed in association with TEKES, the Lappeenranta University of Technology and VTT.
Subcontractors for the diesel expansion project at Porvoo refinery
Metso Automation delivered the automation solution for the new production line and for the hydrogen plant. The system provided includes the MetsoDNA automation solution, HIMA safety related systems and FieldCare field equipment support tools. This turnkey delivery also included planning, installation, testing, start-up and training.
JP Engineering Ltd and JP-Kakko Oy, which are part of the Jaakko Pöyry Group’s Forest Industry business group, were subcontracted by Neste Engineering Oy to provide engineering services for the diesel project. The value of the contract was estimated at €8m and included process, piping, equipment, automation, instrumentation, electrification and structural engineering as well as procurement services.
Vaasa Engineering delivered low- and medium-voltage switchgears for the new production line of the diesel project. The contract included close to 600 cubicles of VEDA low-voltage switchgears, 90 cubicles of medium-voltage switchgears, medium-voltage bus ducts, 200m of low-voltage bus ducts containing special structures and a substantial protection system together with electricity distribution control systems. The electricity distribution equipment delivered contains advanced control and protection technology, and they were connected to the upper level monitoring and control system with modern bus solutions.
Vaasa Engineering started the work in February 2005, it was complete by the third quarter of 2005.
Sweco provided preliminary and detailed engineering for the new PL4 at Porvoo refinery. Pöyry provided material coordination, process design, instrumentation, automation and field engineering services for the residue hydrocracking unit.
Details of the hydrogen production plant at Porvoo refinery
The diesel conversion process consumes considerable amounts of hydrogen, so the investment also included a large hydrogen plant with a capacity of 180,000Nm³/h (14t/h to 16t/h). This unit was licensed and engineered by the Thyssen Krupp Group engineering subsidiary UHDE GmbH for a €25m contract and is one of the largest one-line steam reforming hydrogen plants in the world.
The feedstocks for the unit are natural gas, refinery off-gas and liquid propane (these can be varied according to the refinery requirements).
The Rintekno Group was responsible for automation, instrumentation, electrification and mechanical engineering of the hydrogen plant, which was 3D modelled by an Intergraph PDS system. Rintekno were also involved in detailed process engineering of both the heavy residue unit and hydrogen unit. The detailed engineering work was completed by the start of 2005 and the new production line was started up in the first quarter of 2007 following commissioning
Hydrocracker unit of the Neste Oil’s Finnish refinery
The main unit of the new complex is a residue hydrocracking unit, which is basically an integrated LC-finer and mild hydrocracker.
The LC-finer hydroprocessor breaks down bitumen feed through a reaction with hydrogen over an ebulated catalyst bed and produces Light Gas Oil (LGO). High-pressure LC-fining reactors are central to the process. They were delivered by the Japan Steel Works Ltd (JSW).
The technology utilised in the residue hydrocracking unit was delivered by Chevron Lummus Global. The main feed is vacuum residue plus FCC slurry. Up to 11t/h of hydrogen is required for the plant. The integrated, dual-phase hydocracking unit operates under a pressure of 160bar.
The construction process required 12,000m³ of concrete for the foundations and 3,000t of steel construction along with a total of 180km of new piping. The cabling work meant that an additional 2,000km of cabling was needed. The new process line is referred to as production line four and requires 3,500t of cooling water. Therefore a new cooling water plant was also constructed to supply production lines three and four. The capacity of the residue hydrocracking unit is 33,500 barrels per day.
Biodiesel plant at Porvoo refinery
Another aspect of the diesel project at Porvoo refinery was the construction of a biodiesel plant. The total budgeted cost of the investment into this element of the new plant was approximately €100m, one-third of which was spent in 2005 and the remainder in 2006. The plant, which came online in the summer of 2007, has an annual capacity of approximately 170,000t of biodiesel (3,500bpd). Construction began in March 2005. Another similar unit was started up at Porvoo during 2009.
The production of biodiesel (NExBTL diesel) is based on a proprietary process developed by Neste Oil that produces high-quality diesel fuel from NExBTL raw materials such as palm oil, rapeseed oil, vegetable oils and animal fats. There is expected to be an increased demand for biodiesel since the EU is encouraging its member countries to boost the use of renewable raw materials in traffic fuels. The aim of the EU biofuel directive was to raise the proportion of biofuels to 5.75% of total gasoline and diesel consumption (energy content) by 2010. In mid-2008 the new plant produced 6.8% of the diesel consumption in Finland, which came to 2.5 million tons per year.
Neste Oil and Gas was the first oil company in Europe to successfully develop a second-generation biodiesel production process and to invest significant funds into it. The emission tests carried out by two leading heavy duty automobile manufacturers showed Neste biodiesel to be one of the best available. The biodiesel can be used as a blending component in conventional diesel fuel.
In 2007 Fortum Oil signed an agreement with Stora Enso (a paper and forest products company) to develop biofuels from wood residues. A €14m demonstration plant to produce wood-based biofuel for refining at Porvoo was inaugurated on 11 July 2009 at the Varkaus mill.
The plant will develop technological and engineering systems to start production on a commercial scale using a 12mW gasifier. It will cover all stages including drying of biomass, gasification, gas cleaning and testing of Fischer-Tropsch catalysts.
Neste Green Diesel became available in May 2008 and proved a success with drivers. The new fuel contains a minimum of 10% renewable fuel and complies with the EN 590 standard, and its launch represents an important step forward on the European traffic fuel market.
New isomerisation unit at Porvoo’s refinery
In June 2008 Neste Oil decided to build a new isomerisation unit with an investment of around €80 million at the Porvoo refinery. In April 2009, it was decided to postpone the construction owing to a slump in demand for petroleum products. The plant’s engineering work was almost complete by 2009. Construction of the new unit was announced in February 2013, with an investment of around €65m. The construction will begin later in 2013 and is expected to be completed by 2015.
The new unit will be able to process 600,000 t/a of existing gasoline fractions into higher-value, premium-quality gasoline to increase the refinery total gasoline output by 200,000 t/a. Feedstock for the unit will come from the company’s refineries at Porvoo and Naantali.
Neste Jacobs will provide engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) services for the new isomerisation unit.
