Rnest starts processing oil on 04/11
This is the official date set for the Abreu e Lima Refinery (Rnest), in the Suape Industrial Port Complex, in Greater Recife, to begin processing oil; next Wednesday, the first ship carrying crude oil will dock at the port to begin refining tests at the unit; budgeted at US$18 billion, Rnest is the 14th refinery built by Petrobras in Brazil and the first after 34 years without inaugurating a new plant; when fully completed, in the first half of 2015, the project will have the capacity to process 230 barrels of oil per day.
Pernambuco 247 – The Abreu e Lima Refinery (Rnest), in the Suape Industrial Port Complex, in Greater Recife, already has a date set to begin processing oil: November 4th. Next Wednesday (3), the first ship bringing crude oil will dock at the port to begin refining tests at the unit. The information is from reporter Adriana Guarda, from Jornal do Commercio. Estimated at US$ 18 billion, Rnest is currently the 14th refinery built by Petrobras in Brazil and the first after 34 years without inaugurating a new plant.
The project will have the capacity to process 115 barrels of oil per day starting in November, and another 115 from May 2015, totaling 230 barrels per day. Of this total, 70% will be used for diesel production. The other 30% will be transformed into derivatives such as gasoline, kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas/LPG (cooking gas), naphtha, coke, and marine fuel (bunker).
In explaining how oil refining works, Professor Leonardo Maciel, PhD, from the Chemical Engineering and Petroleum Engineering courses at Faculdade Boa Viagem/DeVry, said that the process occurs in three stages: distillation, conversion, and treatment. According to him, "through pipelines, the oil is transported into the refinery, where it is stored in large tanks."
"The refining process itself begins in the atmospheric distillation unit. The oil is heated to 370ºC, evaporates, and from this evaporation it is transformed into derivatives, according to pressure and temperature conditions," he stated. The derivatives are stored in tanks specific to each product and, subsequently, are transported to the market, mostly by road.
Less dependence on imports
Currently, Brazil has the capacity to refine 2,1 million barrels of oil per day, but aims to reach 3,3 million by 2020 in order to meet growing demand. In March of this year, the director of the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP), Florival Carvalho, stated that the operation of two refining units at Rnest will allow Brazil to become self-sufficient in diesel oil production within three years.
According to Carvalho, the forecast is that the fuel market will maintain the same growth rate as this year, expanding between 4% and 5%. Regarding the diesel market, ANP figures indicate that consumption of the product increased by 4,6% in 2013 compared to 2012, rising from 55,9 billion to 58,4 billion liters.
“Of this total, the country had to source approximately 9,9 billion liters of the product from the external market – the volume of our external dependence. With the arrival of the first trains [units] from the refinery, this dependence will be significantly reduced, especially for diesel oil, and we should stop importing within two to three years,” stated Carvalho, at the 9th Seminar on the Evaluation of the Petroleum Derivatives and Biofuels Market, in Rio.