KBR Wins Indian Nitric Acid Project
KBR subsidiary Plinke has won a contract from India’s Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizers & Chemicals (GNFC) to build a concentrated nitric acid (CNA) plant at Bharuch, Gujarat.
Plinke will provide the license and engineering as well as proprietary equipment for the unit, which will produce 98.5% CNA for the Indian market. The plant will use Plinke’s Magnac process in which a high concentration of nitric acid is achieved by extractive rectification using a magnesium nitrate solution. It will be designed for a throughput capacity of 150 t/day and is scheduled to go on stream in 2021.
The facility is the fourth that Plinke has licensed and supplied to GFNC in the past 20 years.
In separate news, KBR has won two maintenance contracts in Saudi Arabia. In the first deal, the US contractor has been engaged to provide long-term maintenance services to Sadara Chemical, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and Dow, at its complex in Jubail.
Together with its local joint venture subsidiary KBR Al Yusr, the contractor will provide preventative and predictive maintenance services for an initial period of three years, extendable up to five years. In addition, the contractors will support Sadara by managing and performing corrective maintenance, shutdowns and turnarounds.
KBR originally provided feasibility and pre-front end engineering and design services for the Sadara complex, as well as project management oversight during the engineering, procurement and construction phase. The site comprises 26 manufacturing plants and was the largest chemical complex ever built in a single phase, costing around $20 billion.
Under a second deal, KBR has been awarded a three-year extension to its existing general maintenance services contract for Satorp’s refinery in Jubail. Through its local subsidiary KBR will continue to provide a variety of services to the crude distillation units, distillate hydrocracker, sulfur recovery unit, aromatics, catalytic cracking unit, tank farms and port loading facilities, among others.
Satorp is a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and Total.
