Dangote Refinery’s Huge Distillation Component Lands in Lekki

By Mike Ojoobanikan

From a distance, it looks like a behemoth or a beached whale from the depth of the sea! Also, a keen observer could compare it to a pre-historic mastodon, wobbling around the planet in the pre-ice age. For literary people, it strikes one as the giant but tied character on whose body tiny human beings climb like ants in in the town of Lilliput in Jonathan Swift’s novel, Gulliver’s Travels.

However, this is no fiction but reality. The Dangote Oil Refining Company (DORC) Limited last week took delivery of one of the major component of its refinery equipment; the regenerator for the Residual Fluid Catalytic cracker.

Fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) is, according to the company, one of the most important conversion processes used in petroleum refineries. It is widely used to convert the high-boiling, high-molecular weight hydrocarbon fractions of petroleum crude oils into more valuable gasoline, olefinic gases, and other products.

Sources said the company has commenced the installation of equipment for the 650,000 barrels-per-day crude oil refinery being built in the Lekki area of Lagos.

The refinery has continued to receive heavy equipment, through the Dangote jetty, located close to the refinery in the Lekki Free Trade Zone.

It would be recalled that the jetty, constructed by Dangote Oil Refinery received its first ship of 132 metres long, 9,755 tonnes general cargo ship, last year to deliver essential equipment for the ongoing construction.

The refinery is being designed to accommodate multiple grades of domestic and foreign crude and process these into high-quality gasoline, diesel, kerosene, and aviation fuels that meet Euro V emissions specifications, plus polypropylene.

It will include a crude distillation unit, single-train residual fluid catalytic cracking unit, diesel hydro-treating unit, continuous catalyst regeneration unit, alkylation unit, and a polypropylene unit. The refinery will also be able to adjust its production of different products to match market demands.

The Head of Quality Assurance/Quality Compliance and Construction, DORC, Mr. Rama Putta, said the sand filling of the site has been completed, adding that 60 per cent of the land was swampy.

“…The refinery equipment are coming in semi-finished shape and we will finish them off here at the sight. The remaining are being manufactured in various countries, including China, India, America, South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia.”

Executive Director, Dangote Group, Mr. Devakumar Edwin said the 650,000 barrel per day refinery would stimulate economic development in Nigeria. He said the refinery was designed to process a variety of light and medium grades of crude and produce extremely clean fuels that meet Euro V specification.

The Dangote boss said usually, the sulphur in petroleum fuels results in vehicle exhaust emissions that have negative impact on health and environment, adding that the Dangote plant has invested in most advanced technology to produce Euro V fuel due to help Nigeria meet the European Standard of gasoline.

He said the project would provide thousands of direct and indirect jobs and add value to the Nigeria’s economic development, noting that the refinery will lead to significant skills transfer and technology acquisition opportunities in the country.

History

Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote unveiled early plans for the refinery in September 2013, when he announced that he had secured about $3.3 billion in financing for the project. At the time, the refinery was estimated to cost about $9 billion, of which $3 billion would be invested by the Dangote Group and the remainder via commercial loans, and begin production in 2016. However, after a change in location to Lekki, construction of the refinery did not begin until 2016 with excavation and infrastructure preparation, and the planned completion was pushed back to late 2018.

In July 2017, major structural construction began, and Dangote estimated that the refinery would be mechanically complete in late 2019 and commissioned in early 2020. According to An associated project at the site of the refinery, a urea fertilizer factory, is scheduled to begin operation in late 2018 and produce about three million tons of urea annually.

With a single crude oil distillation unit, the refinery will be the largest single-train refinery in the world. At full production, the facility will be able to produce 50,000,000 litres (13,000,000 US gal) of gasoline and 17,000,000 litres (4,500,000 US gal) of diesel daily, as well as aviation fuel and plastic products. With a greater capacity than the total output of Nigeria’s existing refining infrastructure, the Dangote Refinery will be able to meet the country’s entire domestic fuel demand, as well as export refined products.

With more information from Wikipedia