The Successful Debottlenecking of the OCI Beaumont Complex

摘要

The OCI Beaumont facility is an integrated methanol and ammonia complex that was built in the late 1960's and revamped in the 1980's with Lurgi's parallel steam raising methanol converters. In 2012, the OCI Beaumont facility was restarted after being moth-balled in 2004. On restart, the plant exceeded design rates and energy consumption for the case without CO2 addition. In 2015, a debottle-neck project was successfully implemented to increase methanol and ammonia production by 25% and 12% respectively. This paper discusses the safety measures taken during shutdown to preserve methanol synthesis catalyst while performing upgrade works in the high-pressure synthesis loop; and the successful restart and recovery from a start-up incident that posed great risk to Clariant's high performing MegaMax® methanol synthesis catalyst, already close to 3 years on-stream. Also discussed are the upgrades made to the facility to increase capacity while considering optimum operating conditions for extended catalyst life.