This project was undertaken for one of the world’s largest energy companies.
The Project
Like all petrochemical and industrial facilities our client (a refinery in the west of Germany) carries out scheduled Turnarounds (TAR) that involve the shutdown of an entire process unit or plant for an extended period.
A shutdown or ‘outage’ facilitates an intensive period of cleaning, inspection, maintenance and upgrading.
The Challenge
Turnarounds are extremely expensive - both in terms of lost production while the process unit is offline - and in terms of direct costs for the labour, tools, heavy equipment and materials used to execute the project.
TARs are the most significant portion of a plant's yearly maintenance budget and can affect the company's bottom line if mismanaged.
Cleaning activities during the turnaround will generate a significant quantity of hazardous waste in the form of contaminated sludge and effluent. This material has to be managed at source and at a rate that ensures there are no delays or stoppages.
What We Did
During two separate TARs, Separo supplied a complete sludge and effluent treatment system capable of processing varied fluid waste streams ranging from heavy sediment to hydrocarbon contaminated water.
The equipment was designed for use in potentially explosive atmospheres (ATEX Group II, Category 2) and included purging with an inert gas and auto shutdown.
Value Gained
Separo’s Industrial Waste Services (IWS) team supported this large dual-TAR exercise safely, without delays while simultaneously reducing waste and recovering valuable resources.
Our approach ensured that fluid waste streams generated during the turnaround could be transferred and treated day or night without delay to the Turnaround. At the same time, the waste treatment process recovered valuable resources (both oil and water) and significantly reduced the quantity of waste requiring offsite disposal.
This exercise resulted in the following benefits for our client:
- Waste reduction
- Time savings
- Recovery of valuable resources
