Nippon Oil to start HSFCC unit

Nippon Oil Corp. announced that it plans to start a 3,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) high severity fluid catalytic cracking unit (HS-FCC) at its 250,000 bpd refinery in Mizushima, western Japan in early 2011. After starting the 3,000 bpd HS-FCC and running it until 2012, Nippon Oil said it will consider the viability of building a bigger 40,000 bpd HS-FCC unit either in Japan or Saudi Arabia. Yields using current fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) technologies are about 50% 92 RON gasoline, 4% propylene and 26% fuel oil. HS-FCC technology is designed to raise gasoline octane to 98 RON for around 40% of the total output, while propylene output is expected to rise to about 20%. (January 29, 2009)