Bid Boland Gas Refinery in southern Khuzestan Province has taken the lead in promoting environment-friendly practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the managing director of the plant said.
“Gas refineries are industries characterized by high consumption of energy and at the same time high CO2 emission. We have taken appropriate measures to do our fair share to curb toxic emissions,” Alimohammad Pourreza was quoted as saying by the Oil Ministry news website.
Greenhouse gases are capable of trapping the earth's emitted radiation, which otherwise escapes back into space. The primary greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide.
Referring to eco-friendly projects since 2017, he noted that special gas condensate storage tanks have been constructed due to which condensates are not burnt in ground level pits.
Before the tanks were built, close to 7,000 cubic meters of gas was burnt every day that emitted considerable amount of CO2 into the environment.
“Optimization of flare stack systems has also cut greenhouse gases in the plant by 200,000 cubic meters per day,” he said but did not provide details.
The 30 kilowatt and 60 kW solar panels have helped the company not to use fossil fuels to generate power, resulting in the reduction of hazardous emissions.
It is noteworthy that the gradual expansion of renewable energy since 2009 has helped Iran reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 2.24 million tons.
Refineries are among major consumers of water for the cooling towers while during treatment and refining of sour gas, large quantities of wastewater are produced.
Online Monitoring
According to the official, online monitoring systems have been in place at the plant’s wastewater treatment facility. Output of the plant is used for cooling towers and watering green areas, which in turn has cut pollution from the refinery.
The treatment plant, equipped with reverse osmosis membranes for water purification, has a capacity of recycling 400 cubic meters of water per day, reducing industrial sewerage into the environment.
“A hazardous waste management facility has recently opened in the firm which receives toxic waste for treatment, storage and disposal.”
The refinery also has other programs underway, including studies to construct quality units, developing production capacity and establishing the environmental management system of ISO 14001: 2015, which specifies the requirements for an environmental management system that an organization can use to improve environmental protection.
Moreover, the refinery is equipped with a modern vapor recovery unit that collect s hazardous vapor to be reprocessed or destroyed.
Equipped with facilities to separate ethane from methane, the refinery helps diversify output of petrochemicals, which is presently allocated to urea and ammoniac production. Separation of the two chemicals helps increase productivity and cut waste.
Bid Boland gas treating facility is fed gas from the giant South Pars and Aghajari and Aghaz fields in the Persian Gulf.
Located in Behbahan County in the southwest, Bid Boland is a large refinery with annual production capacity of 10.4 million tons of methane, 1.5 million tons ethane, 1 million tons propane, 600,000 tons gas condensates and 500,000 tons butane.
