9.8 meter coke drum – world’s largest – going in at IOCL Paradip

New Delhi, 16 November, 2012
Indian Oil Corporation’s 15-million-tonne Paradip refinery project on the Bay of Bengal coast now has the distinction of possessing the world’s largest coke drum.
The coke drums were installed on November 15. Each drum weighs 630 MT and is 45.52 metre in height and 9.8 metres interior [HinduBusinessLine.com had incorrectly reported 10.67m].
 
Manufactured by Larsen & Toubro, Hazira, on July 30, 2011, the drums along with saddles were loaded on SPMT (Self Propelled Modular Transporter) and was transported by J M Baxi from the lay down area to the site, IndianOil said. Drums are fabricated to FosterWheeler (USA) specifications.  L&T’s previous benchmark was a 520 MT drum for IOCL’s Gujarat Refinery.
 
The company is looking at second half of 2013 for the refinery to get running. Once commissioned, the Paradip refinery will take IndianOil’s refining capacity to over 80 million tonnes annually.
 
IndianOil Director (Refineries), RajKumar Ghosh, said the Rs 30,000-crore project is one of the largest projects undertaken in India in terms of investment as well as scale of construction involving a large number of equipment, piping, huge quantity of steel, cement, electrical and electronic machinery and other construction material.
 
The construction will use up over 10,00,600 cubic meters of concrete. The structural steel used will be over 2.9 lakh MT in weight. Over 2,200 km of pipes will be used in this project and electrical and instrumentation cables will run into over 20,000 km.
Four coke drums will be erected on a 35 metre high concrete foundation, he said.
The coking unit will produce raw petroleum coke.
 
IndianOil produces calcination grade raw petroleum coke at its Barauni, BRPL, Digboi and Guwahati refineries. Fuel grade petcoke is produced at Panipat refinery.
 
Paul Orlowski