Nynas UK AB

At Nynas Bitumen’s Eastham Plant at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire, the journey from crude to highly refined process oil starts in the distillation column. The crude oil is pumped from storage tanks through a heat exchanger system where its temperature is increased to about 200°C – and then further heated in a furnace to around 300°C where it is partly vaporised before entering an Atmospheric Distillation Column.

Here the physical separation of the components takes place. The lighter components rise to the top and the heaviest components fall to the bottom of the column. The material from the bottom then enters a Vacuum Distillation Column via another heat exchanger. This is where the bitumen is produced. Vacuum distillation helps to maintain the inherently high binding characteristics of crude due to the lower operating temperatures.

As an established supplier of process control instrumentation to Nynas, ABLE proposed the Drexelbrook IntelliPoint RF Admittance Point Switch for the critical high level alarm duties on the bitumen storage tanks. Spillages from these bitumen storage tanks as a result of overfilling have a high potential for serious injury, as bitumen is stored at high temperatures and has a large thermal capacity. Furthermore, the coating rejection capability of the IntelliPoint is key to the success of the measurement of this highly viscous medium.