The Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) is using GE mobile water units to convert seawater into high quality boiler feedwater at its Awali refinery.
Bapco refines more than 260,000 barrels of crude oil per day. The GE units provide Bapco with a cost-effective solution for on-site desalination and eliminate the need to bring water to the refinery via tanker trucks.
“GE’s mobile water solutions enabled Bapco to convert seawater into high-purity boiler feedwater for refinery use,“ says Yousif Ahmed, acting manager, power and utilities, Bapco. “Availing mobile water solutions ensure a continual water supply instead of relying on tank truck deliveries.”
Previously, the limited in-house distillate water production from the desalination units meant Bapco had to import water using tank trucks to make up the shortage. This would cause gridlock on refinery roads, and there were associated risks involved in having numbers of tankers inside the refinery operating area.
For the project, GE Water & Process Technologies provided Bapco with a turnkey operations and maintenance solution comprising a total of 13 mobile water units, including six mobile seawater multimedia filter containers, five mobile seawater reverse osmosis containers, two mobile brackish water reverse osmosis containers and four diesel-operated electrical generators.
GE also supplied all mobile pumping skids, tanks and interconnecting piping and cabling.
The mobile water fleet started operations in May 2017 and will take care of Bapco’s desalinated water requirements for one year.
“For the Bapco refinery, GE’s mobile water technology produces 136 m3/h of water, which meets the refinery’s high-quality standards,” states Kevin Cassidy, global leader, engineered systems – GE Water & Process Technologies. “Our mobile solutions allow Bapco to desalinate the water on-site and immediately use it for oil refining.”
