Emtivac Engineering has recently completed a large project with 8 liquid ring vacuum pump units for a new Alumina Refinery in Saudi Arabia.
There are 3 x 500 kW units for Pan Filters and 5 x 280 kW units for Disc Filters. The heavy duty liquid ring vacuum pumps are Emtivac N2BE/HE units with Ductile Iron End Castings. The N2BE/HE vacuum pumps were selected due to their unique high efficiency design and low operating speeds at the duty points requested. Gearboxes are water cooled Siemens/ Flender units with sunshades and electric motors from WEG. The entire skid is designed to withstand the harsh environmental conditions in the Saudi desert and the caustic process conditions.
All engineering design & fabrication of baseframes, piping and vessels was carried out by Emtivac and other local Dandenong businesses. Base frames were heat treated and machined after fabrication.
The project specifications and QA requirements were very stringent and a specific project manager was allocated for the duration of the project to ensure all the customer’s requirements were met.
The fully assembled skid for the Pan Filter vacuum pump has a total weight of 24,000 kg, special heavy duty shipping crates were manufactured to safely transport the skids to Saudi and to protect the units on site prior to installation.
This project is the largest completed by Emtivac in its 15 year history but the company has just been awarded an even larger project for 2 x liquid ring compressor packages for Flare Gas Recovery at an oil refinery in Malaysia.
About the project
Ma’aden’s $10.8 billion joint venture with Alcoa will be the largest and most efficient vertically integrated aluminium complex in the world. It will use Saudi Arabia’s bauxite resources to profitably produce aluminium for domestic and international markets as well as to facilitate the development of domestic downstream industries in the Kingdom.
The aluminium project involves the development, design, construction and subsequent operation of two integrated sites:
Al Ba’itha
Al Ba’itha, near Quiba in north-eastern Saudi Arabia and around 600km north west of Ras Al Khair, is the site of the project’s bauxite mine and ore crushing and handling facilities which are due to begin production in 2014.The mine plan has been prepared based upon the estimated capacities of the project’s refinery and smelter and envisages production at an annual mining rate of 4.0 million mtpy of bauxite.
Ras Al Khair
The project’s alumina refinery, aluminium smelter and rolling mill are under construction at Ras Al Khair, 90 km North of Jubail. Bauxite ore transported by rail to Ras Al Khair will be refined in the GCC’s first alumina refinery to produce 1.8 million mtpy of alumina, which will in turn be processed in the smelter to produce 740,000 mtpy of aluminium. The rolling mill with initial hot-mill capacity of 380,000 mtpy will focus initially on the production of sheet, end and tab stock for the manufacture of cans and other products including auto, construction and foil applications. The rolling mill will be one of the world’s most technically advanced and will have the capacity to re-cycle aluminium scrap.
The smelter and rolling mill will begin operations in 2013 while the alumina refinery will come on stream in 2014. Alumina will be imported to supply the smelter for the intervening period.
A key infrastructure item for the aluminium operations at Ras Al Khair is a power, steam and water facility. In October 2009 Ma’aden signed an energy conversion agreement with the Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) and Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) to develop a joint power and desalination plant which will generate 2400 MW of electricity and 1.025 million cubic metres of water per day. Of that, the aluminium complex will use 1,350 MW of electricity and 25,000 cubic metres per day of water. The remaining electricity and water will be supplied to the national grid.
