Advanced Water Treatment Technology Selected for Process Water Production at Refinery

Petroleum Company of Trinidad & Tobago, (PETROTRIN) have signed a contract with GE (USA) to design, construct, operate and maintain a temporary water treatment plant, utilising GE’s advanced ZeeWeed ultrafiltration (UF) and MobileRO reverse osmosis (RO) technology, which will supply the refinery with 3.5 million imperial gallons of water per day of filtered water.

PETROTRIN has undertaken a Clean Fuels Programme, which involves the addition of new plants and an upgrade of the existing fluid catalytic cracking unit to enhance the economic performance of the refinery and to meet future demands in gasoline quality. As a result of these changes within the refinery, the refinery steam and cooling water demand will increase to sustain these process units. Therefore, the water demand will increase in tandem with the increased steam and cooling water demand.

The mobile water treatment plant will be located within PETROTRIN’s refinery at Pointe-a-Pierre, Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies. The new mobile water treatment plant will provide RO process water to meet the higher demand for filtered water that will be used for industrial processes inside the refinery. GE’s technology offers the added benefit of a small footprint with high operating efficiency.

Specifically, the new facility will include five of GE’s M-PAK mobile UF units, four 600-gallons-per-minute MobileRO units, three circular tanks, RO feed pumps, transfer pumps, waste pumps, RO cleaning skid, air compressor for instruments and an office trailer with storage and laboratory. GE will design, construct, install, own, operate and maintain the facility for two years.

GE’s water business currently provides chemicals and technical monitoring services at the refinery for key unit operations, such as the crude units and boilers.

Water recovery at the various treatment stages are 90 percent for M-PAK UF, 75 percent for the MobileRO with 10 to 15 percent blending out of the UF.

“The project with PETROTRIN is a prime example of GE’s ability to meet the complex water treatment demands of the hydrocarbon processing and refining industries. Our mobile water solutions in particular help our customers meet their urgent and short-term needs,” said Heiner Markoff, president and CEO—water and process technologies for GE Power & Water.