'Challenges faced by refiners are common around the world'

Simon Hobbs, Director - R&D, Honeywell UOP and Steven C Gimre, Managing Director, UOP India Pvt Ltd, give a global outlook of the oil refinery industry and how Honeywell UOP’s solutions are helping refiners maximise the efficiency of plant operations, in an interview with Monica Chaturvedi Charna...

- Monica Chaturvedi Charna

Specific to the oil and gas sector, how have Honeywell UOP’s technologies and solutions helped customers in improving their return on investment (RoI), reducing the execution schedules and achieving better environmental performance?

It is clear that upgrading the refineries to meet BSVI emission standards would require refiners to meet new fuel specifications. The economics of that will not be very positive, hence, refinery companies will have to figure out what could be done to the refinery while upgrading the fuel specifications. In the Indian context, companies are increasing their capacity significantly. They are preparing themselves to meet the demand that is set to be seen in the coming years. Also, refinery companies are looking to improve operational efficiency. All these efforts from the refiners’ end are related to improving the return on investment (RoI). In view of this, we are getting inquiries related to not just upgradation but also related to increasing the capacity and productivity. Honeywell UOP is helping its customers achieve these results.

UOP also has solutions related to reducing the impurities from crude oil. Kindly shed light on them and do you have any production lines in India?

We do not have manufacturing facilities for this process in India. However, we have products related to absorbents, globally. Refining and gas processing are two major categories where these absorbents are used. In refining, a conversion happens from a material into a product which has the right kind of boiling range, smoke point, etc. UOP’s hydro-cracking technology is one of our major solutions aimed at removing contaminants and facilitating the conversion. It removes metals, sulphur, nitrogen, etc.