Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) has been implementing a highly ambitious expansion project in their Jamnagar Refinery – producing synthetic gas from coal. To achieve this, Mukesh Ambani owned RIL needed massive streams of oxygen for its proposed petroleum coke and coal gasification facilities. Hence, they partnered with Germany-based Linde AG’s Indian arm, Linde India to supply and install gas and air separation units. The Linde Group is a world-leading gases and engineering company with around 62,000 employees in more than 100 countries worldwide.
RIL had awarded Linde AG with a contract to supply and install 5 hydrogen units at their Jamnagar Refinery in 2007. Reliance’s association with Linde AG has continued to made big news, especially now, with the news that, in April 2013 the company announced that Linde’s Engineering Division will supply four large air separation units (ASUs) for the production of gaseous oxygen. In an announcement on Friday, 8th November 2013, Linde issues a statement saying, “In the course of 2013, the scope of this major project was further expanded to include, for example, Linde providing RIL with four sulphur recovery plants and a pressure swing adsorption plant to produce pure hydrogen on the Jamnagar site. As a result, the total value of the order for Linde is now over €700 million.”
RIL needs massive streams of oxygen for its proposed petroleum coke and coal gasification facilities. To treat the synthesis gas generated during this gasification process, Linde will also delivered two RECTISOL® acid gas removal units. In addition, Linde will build two additional ASUs to supply high-purity oxygen to RIL’s ethylene glycol facilities in Jamnagar.
Being an energy giant looking towards sustainable growth, energy conservation continues to be an area of huge interest to RIL. In his annual general meeting speech this past June, Mukesh Ambani stressed on the importance of the same. “One such initiative is the coke gasification project which is under rapid execution. Through this project, pet coke at the refinery will be upgraded to Syngas (synthetic gas) for further use as fuels and for hydrogen and chemicals production,” said Ambani in the same meeting.
Reliance is also building one of the world’s largest ethylene crackers taking advantage of refinery integration at Jamnagar. This project will be commissioned in the second half of 2016 and would nearly double the ethylene capacity to 3.3 million tonne a year.