Sohar Refinery Gets Wet Gas Scrubber from L&T Heavy

Larsen & Toubro Heavy Engineering (L&T HE) has completed a challenging work of fabrication and transportation of a Wet Gas Scrubber (WGS) for Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Company (Orpic) .

During Orpic's planned shutdown of its Sohar Refinery, and while an outside contracting team was working on the Wet Gas Scrubber (WGS), a fire incident caused significant damage to the unit. The Wet Gas Scrubber is a massive vessel — 12 metres in diameter with a height of 11 metres and weight of 95 metric tonnes.

The WGS is an important element of Orpic's environment protection system for the Catalytic Cracking Unit and contributes to refinery's capacity utilisation. Hence, Orpic needed to replace the unit as soon as possible.

Conventional manufacturing facilities and methods would have taken around four to five months to complete this work. When Orpic, through its contractor Alstom Power, approached Larsen & Toubro Heavy Engineering, the latter decided to take up the challenge despite already having a full schedule of work.

Meets deadline
L&T HE agreed to complete the fabrication and transportation of WGS within a 62-day timeframe. This schedule included material procurement, rigging up of all required resources and obtaining required permits to deliver the job to Orpic's site, in addition to developing a new yard facility.

The special yard facility was constructed and innovative manufacturing sequences were adopted to meet the challenging schedule. Orpic and Alstom gave active support throughout the process to enable the execution team to forge ahead on a 24/7 basis. In addition to Orpic and Alstoms' constant assistance, Musab Al Mahruqi, Orpic chief executive and senior management from both companies visited the facility to motivate and guide the team.

In the end L&T HE beat its own target by completing the job seven days ahead of schedule. With the manufacturing completed, there was a further challenge in transporting the Wet Gas Scrubber from L&T HE's workshop to the Sohar Refinery. A survey was done to find a route with 12-metre height clearance to the refinery. This required clearances from multiple agencies, coordination with them and civil work to remove various obstacles, height posts, electrical lamps and sign boards. Moving the unit needed special equipment and a separate study which was also completed on time.