According to the latest reports, Russia’s Gazprom Neft is investing more than 5.2 billion rubles on a project to upgrade and modernize the existing 767,000 tonne (per year) Delayed Coking Unit (DCU) at its Omsk refinery in Western Siberia as part of its ongoing modernization program to reduce environmental impacts and improve processing capacities, conversion rates, energy efficiency, and production qualities at the site.
Alongside increasing overall DCU efficiency as well its ability to further process heavy oil residues, the overhaul project specifically will equip the coker with new technology which will enable the plant to become the first in Russia to produce needle coke. The unit is expected to produce 38,700 tonnes (per year) of needle coke and the upgrade is expected to be completed in early 2020.
The upgrade of the delayed coker, built in 1971, includes the replacement of the three coke chambers which constitute the main equipment of the unit. A separate storage park will be built to store needle coke.
The revamped DCU will become Russia’s first plant capable of producing needle coke, which will be sent to a petroleum coke calcination facility for further processing into a finished product for the production of graphite electrodes.
With the surge in graphite electrode demand globally over past one year, the demand for needle coke (raw material for GE) has also increased significantly. Russia has presence of one of the key GE producers, Enorgoprom Group with a capacity of 55,000 tonnes (per year) and the company relied upon imports to meet its needle coke requirements from overseas market. However, with this upcoming in-house needle coke facility, the company can reduce its dependency upon imports to some extent.
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