PetroChina Dalian Petrochemical's crude throughput plunged 40% to 30,000mt per day after the shutdown of its 10-mil-mt/yr crude distillate unit caused by fire last Saturday (Jul 16), according to a refinery source.
The throughput may further drop to 25,000mt if production was not resumed in the near term, the source told C1.
"It is unknown when the unit will resume operation as the accident is still under investigation," said the source.
"Operation will not resume in at least a month, because heat exchanger is an important device in CDU," said a source with one refinery underlying PetroChina in Northeast China.
Saturday's fire, which was caused by a leak at a heat exchanger in the CDU, was put out right on the day, resulting in no deaths and injuries.
The 10-mil-mt/yr CDU was just restarted early July after about 40-day turnaround, C1 reported earlier.
The CDU, coming on stream in March 2006, mainly processes sour crude, C1's data indicated. It entered 40-day maintenance in April 2008, which usually occurs once in three years. All secondary units subsidiary to the unit were put into production in August 2008.
Dalian Petrochemical, located in Dalian City of Northeast China's Liaoning Province, has an annual topping capacity of 20.5-mil mt. Imported crude accounts for over 60% of the refinery’s throughput. It normally produces 350,000mt of gasoline, 700,000mt of gasoil and 34,000mt of kerosene per month.
