Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) has awarded a $174mn engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract to South Korea’s Daelim for remodelling a fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) unit and building acid water treatment facilities at its Mina al-Ahmadi refinery. The work is part of KNPC’s clean fuels project (CFP), intended to improve products quality and expand combined throughput capacity of Mina al-Ahmadi and Mina ‘Abd Allah refineries by 264,000 b/d to 800,000 b/d.

Daelim, which has also won a contract to build a butanol plant in Saudi Arabia (see left), said the project duration is 24 months. The contractor said that besides remodelling the FCC to increase production of gasoline, LPG and propylene from heavy oil, it would build a plant to remove phenol (carbolic acid) from water used in the production process and also build a cooling water tower. The scope of work includes operational testing of the FCC and water treatment facilities. (CONTINUED - 269 WORDS)