News
French Axens will help modernize the Bukhara refinery to stop the production of Ai-80 gasoline
At the beginning of the year, the President of Uzbekistan instructed Prime Minister Abdullah Aripov to resolve the issue of the final abandonment of Ai-80 gasoline from 2025.
According to Uzbekneftegaz, due to the modernization of the Bukhara refinery, it is planned to produce high-octane gasoline grades Ai-92 and Ai-95 in the amount of 60% and 40%, respectively. All gasoline produced in excess of 1 million tons per year (originally planned 1.2 million tons) will comply with the Euro-5 environmental class, which will allow the production of Ai-80 of the Euro-2 class to be abandoned, the report says.
The project is planned to be implemented in 2024-2025 in Fast-Track mode with parallel design and construction.
Axens will design technological installations, including a naphtha hydrotreating plant with a capacity of 360 thousand tons per year, an isomerization plant with a capacity of 380 thousand tons per year and a selective hydrogenation plant for pyrolysis distillate with a capacity of 60 thousand tons per year.
For parallel design, agreements have been reached with the French company on a license agreement for the use of Axens technologies, including staff training and an agreement to develop a package of design documentation, which will take about 5.5 months.
The potential general contractor of the project is the Chinese China National Petroleum Corporation, which will modernize the Bukhara refinery within two years. They also want to involve it in the construction of underground gas storage facilities.
A three-stage modernization of the plant worth 553 million dollars was launched in 2019. The project, developed by South Korean SK Engineering, envisaged by the end of 2025 reaching the design capacity for processing 2.5 million tons of oil and gas condensate and producing 1.2 million tons of Euro-5 gasoline, 200 thousand tons of jet fuel, 750 thousand tons of diesel fuel and 30 thousand tons of fuel oil annually.
Axens has previously collaborated with Uzbekneftegaz on other projects. For example, in 2020, due to the technology of the French company, the production of Euro-4 and Euro-5 diesel fuel was launched at the Bukhara refinery.
