Numaligarh Refinery to use Honeywell Technology to Produce BS-VI Compliant Cleaner-Burning Diesel Fuel

Mini Ratna PSU, Numaligarh Refinery Ltd (NRL), has signed a deal to use Honeywell UOP Unionfining™ technology, to produce cleaner-burning diesel fuel in compliance with India’s Bharat Stage emission standards (BS-VI) and increase crude oil conversion.

Numaligarh Refinery is a public sector undertaking (PSU) under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India. It is located in Numaligarh town in the Golaghat district of Assam, India.

The Numaligarh Refinery Expansion Project (NREP) is expected to facilitate further economic development in the north-eastern states of the country by expanding the region’s crude processing capacity from the present 3.0 million MMTPA to 9.0 MMTPA in Numaligarh.

The UOP Distillate Unionfining™ process will enable the state-owned refinery to produce diesel that complies with India’s BS-VI emission standards, which were implemented last year.

The process will further remove impurities to improve the quality of middle distillate feedstocks that meet increasingly stringent regulations for fuels such as diesel.

Commenting on the project, Mike Banach, Managing Director, UOP India, said “this project with Numaligarh marks the first-ever UOP licensed process unit in an NRL refinery, and it’s the first grassroots diesel hydrotreating unit in India using a latest-generation UOP catalyst.”

“The Unionfining technology will help NRL increase crude processing capacity and comply with ever-stricter standards for diesel production,” Banach added.

Furthermore, the UOP Unionfining technology provides flexible solutions to gas oil conversion for ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel and kerosene production. UOP has licensed more than 370 Unionfining units globally.

The NREP expansion has been part of the Government’s Hydrocarbon Vision 2030 for the north eastern states in India. It is also integrated with a new crude oil pipeline from Paradip in Odisha to Numaligarh in Assam, and a product pipeline from Numaligarh to Siliguri in West Bengal where NRL has its own marketing terminal for product distribution.

In the 3 MMTPA Numaligarh Refinery, Oil India Ltd (OIL) has 80.16 per cent stake, Government of Assam has 15.47 per cent stake, and Engineers India Ltd (EIL) has a shareholding of 4.37 per cent respectively. NRL was created as a vehicle for speedy industrial and economic development of the region.