The Portuguese chemicals company Galp Energia Portugal has been operating the country’s largest refinery in the port of Sines for 30 years. During a planned shutdown in fall 2008, the refinery’s Fluidized Catalytic Cracking (FCC) unit is to undergo extensive modernization. Alongside Uhde Services, who is carrying out the complex engineering on the project, the ThyssenKrupp Services company Xervon has been entrusted with the planning, performance and supervision of all work before and during the shutdown.

Dipl.-Ing. Theodor Jürgens, project manager at Uhde Services, is responsible on site for the entire engineering, purchasing support and schedule management. “Products such as benzole, diesel, gas and oil are currently highly sought-after, prices are rising continuously. To meet this increasing demand, Galp wants to modernize and optimize its production processes. It’s a very demanding job - everything has to be just right.”

That Uhde Services beat off various competitors underlines its position as an international service provider. In the maintenance of production equipment and in the modernization of all fittings and components of chemical and petrochemical industrial facilities, the Haltern-based company has a worldwide reputation as a punctual and reliable partner.

In Sines the current condition of the FCC system will first be assessed. The findings will be used as a basis for the reengineering of the process technology, piping, instrumentation and control equipment and for testing the statics of the steel structure. The system’s dimensions are impressive: “The unit to be modernized by us chiefly comprises a reactor and a regenerator 60 meters in height, around ten meters in diameter and with a total weight of approx. 2,000 tons,” says Theodor Jürgens.

Galp Energia Portugal aims to use the modernization phase to improve plant safety and environmental protection. It is therefore investing in safety-relevant instrumentation and associated monitoring devices. In this connection Uhde Services received an additional order for the optimization of the emergency shutdown system. This additional order in particular underlines the trust placed by Galp Energia Portugal in Uhde Services’ engineering services.