Italian oil and energy group Eni shows how it is possible to systematically implement improvements even in difficult times to protect margins. The company achieved this through increases in efficiency in the ongoing operation of twin reciprocating compressors. The crucial contribution came from HOERBIGER's service.
[from HOERBIGER@MOTION June 2016 ]
Eni Taranto, established in 1967 and one of Southern Europe's largest refineries, has a processing capacity of 6.5 million tons of crude oil. Efficiency is especially crucial in the energy-intensive refinery hydrocracking processes, used to compress hydrogen to generate lightweight hydrocarbons and separate sulfur from crude oil. Hydrocracking does not require 100 percent compressor performance on an ongoing basis. As a result, a compressor featuring a conventional bypass design, which simply returns excess compressed gas, regularly results in lost energy. Without stepless capacity control, the energy spent on compression of the excess gas volume is lost, and along with it cold hard cash.
With the electrohydraulic HydroCOM system, HOERBIGER developed a technology that allows flexible and stepless control of the gas volume in the compression process, reducing energy costs by up to 55 percent.
In the first year after installing the HydroCOM system, Eni Taranto achieved savings to the tune of one million euros in energy costs, followed by additional savings in the years since then. As a result, it launched subsequent installations on additional machines of the refinery's compressor fleet after initially implementing the system on two reciprocating compressors. And there's more: the reliable, powerful, and efficient solution of the capacity control system is considered a best-practice example for efficiency increases throughout Eni and is scheduled to be rolled out in additional plants of the well-established Italian firm.
Stepless capacity control was entirely new to the Engineering and Maintenance team of Eni Taranto. The maintenance crew of a refinery is able to operate an optimally configured capacity control unit without difficulty and easily readjust it. During the installation phase, the knowledge of the HOERBIGER service engineers helped achieve optimized performance and efficiency increases.