One-stop supplier for sealing technology at the Sohar refinery

The refinery

The Sohar Refinery was built with state of the art tech­nol­ogy to process a mixed feed­stock of crude oil and at­mos­pheric residue from the Oman Refining Company since 2006. This feed­stock is trans­ported to the Sohar Refinery via a ded­i­cated 24 inch diameter, 266 km long pipeline. Besides an at­mos­pheric dis­til­la­tion unit with a capacity of 116,000 bpd (barrels per day), the refinery has a residue flu­idized cat­alytic cracking (RFCC) unit, a LPG merox unit, a gasoline desul­phur­iza­tion unit and also a deep desul­phur­iza­tion unit. The re­finer­ies' output for export includes fuel oils, gasoline, LPG, naphtha, gas oil and kerosene.

In 2007 the gov­ern­ment of Oman merged the “Oman Refinery Company” (ORC) with “Sohar Refinery Company” (SRC) to create a com­pet­i­tive world class refining company in the Sul­tanate. Since then the merged entity is named “Oman Re­finer­ies and Petro­chem­i­cals Company” (ORPC) with a combined capacity of about 222,000 barrels per day (ORC 106,000 bpd + SRC 116,000 bpd).

Service contracts

In 2006 EagleBurgmann received its first big order for me­chan­i­cal seals from Sohar Refinery. To enable a quick support to the customer, EagleBurgmann Middle East (EBME) started to stock spare parts in its Dubai service centre. After a suc­cess­ful com­mis­sion­ing and reliable support of EagleBurgmann, the first service contract in the frame of the company's com­pre­hen­sive To­talSeal­Care service concept was signed.

Because the co­op­er­a­tion between EBME and Sohar Refinery got stronger, the seal man­u­fac­turer decided to set up a seal repair service centre directly in Sohar, very close to the refinery in December 2007. As the customer was very sat­is­fied, es­pe­cially with the per­for­mance of EagleBurgmann me­chan­i­cal seals and the after sales service, a long term seal repair contract was signed by the two parties, valid for several years.

Mechanical seals for pumps

The Sohar Refinery complex is equipped with ap­prox­i­mately 320 pumps in total. With a share of approx. 60 %, EagleBurgmann is the main me­chan­i­cal seal man­u­fac­turer of the plant. EagleBurgmann Middle East is re­spon­si­ble for several hundreds of in­stalled me­chan­i­cal seals ranging from Car­tex-DE, H75, MFLWT80, MFL85N to SH types. These seals are running in 188 pumps from Sulzer, Ebara and KSB and are mainly in­stalled in process areas, util­i­ties and tank farm areas of the refinery. To ensure the maximum lifetime of the seals, supply system types ac­cord­ing to API plan 23 and 52 have been selected care­fully from EagleBurgmann's ap­pli­ca­tion en­gi­neers.

Mechanical seals for compressors

EagleBurgmann is not just the leading man­u­fac­turer for pump seals within the plant, there are also several other machines fitted with their sealing products. In the gas pro­cess­ing part of the plant, there are com­pres­sors from Ebara in­stalled, which are fitted with EagleBurgmann dry gas seals. For example type NF90E is running in a cir­cu­la­tion com­pres­sor, and type NF953E is in­stalled in a heat com­pres­sor.

Couplings for compressors and pumps

Ad­di­tion­ally, EagleBurgmann has a good pop­u­la­tion with its flexible di­aphragm cou­plings for com­pres­sors from Ebara and Mayekawa and also for Ebara pumps. In total, there are 22 machines fitted with Model-67, Model-74 and Model-100 cou­plings.

Packings and Gaskets

Be­gin­ning of 2010, ORPC Sohar Refinery had their first plant turn­around and EagleBurgmann got the chance to par­tic­i­pate by sup­ply­ing Buralloy heat ex­changer and equip­ment gaskets as well as Spi­raltherm spiral wound gaskets. Various metal types like soft iron, SS316, SS304, SS410, F5, Monel and even Titanium were used to produce the semi-metal­lic gaskets. Cut gaskets made of Burasil fiber sheets and Sta­totherm graphite sheets were also supplied. Due to a very good co-op­er­a­tion between ORPC en­gi­neers and EagleBurgmann Middle East Packings and Gaskets team, more than 700 gaskets have been supplied on time.

Due to reliable performance of the EagleBurgmann sealing products in several refinery units and frequent customer visits of EBME to the customer, the company received an additional order to retrofit approximately 40 ACME pumps in offsite and utility units. The original seals had been component type rubber bellows seals of an Asian competitor. The pumps are processing a water/ sludge mix by ambient temperature and low pressures. EagleBurgmann replaced these seals with Unitex seals. Compared to component seals, these cartridge seal type has the benefit of easy handling. Since installation, the Unitex seals are running fine.

Additionally EagleBurgmann received orders for further diaphragm couplings and dry gas seals. This growing success is the result of a good customer-manufacturer relationship, excellent quality of products, service and technical know-how of seal specialists.