OREANDA-NEWS. The Gazprom Neft Moscow Refinery has begun construction of a modern facility for the treatment of sulphur-alkaline waste and process condensate. The new facility is designed to remove sulphides and ammonia-nitrogen from waste water. A cutting-edge treatment system will ensure the highest ecological operating standards at the facility, which will be brought into operation in the first half of 2017, and will have a total operational capacity of 120 cubic metres per hour.

The basic design for the sulphur-alkaline and process condensate treatment facility, as well as all project documentation, was developed by Russian engineering company NPF EITEK. As designed, full treatment of waste water will be managed by two independent sections of the facility. The first section will handle the cleaning of effluents from plant facilities currently in operation, including the visbreaking unit, the light naptha isomerisation unit, the diesel fuels hydrocracking unit, the catalytic cracking facility, and others. The second section is intended to be used by a combined Euro+ oil refining facility, currently under construction.

The project envisages the use of its own run-off water for heating, which will considerably increase the energy efficiency of the new facility. In order to ensure the uninterrupted operation of all electrical equipment a new transformer substation will be erected at the plant.

Arkady Egizaryan, CEO of the Gazprom Neft Moscow Refinery commented: “Improving the plant’s water treatment system is one of the most important ecological initiatives of the Moscow Refinery’s modernisation programme. Thanks to the implementation of new technologies and the launch of new treatment facilities, we plan to reduce waste water volumes as far as possible by 2018, and to significantly reduce water consumption at the plant. Preparatory work is currently ongoing ahead of the construction of modern biological treatment plants (a ‘biosphere’), which will further enhance the comprehensive factory-wide industrial-effluent treatment system. Once the biosphere has been brought into production, efficiency in waste water treatment will reach 98–99 percent, with quality, moreover, exceeding the standards incumbent on fishing waters. And 75 percent of the total volume of water used in industrial processes at the Moscow Refinery will be recycled for use throughout the plant’s production cycle.”