CLYDEUNION Pumps in World First Application

As CLYDEUNION Pumps expands into one of the ‘big players’ globally our latest products are becoming ground breaking in their respective markets.  A recent successful project involved the combined engineering expertise from Annecy and Penistone sites in a world first refinery process application. CLYDEUNION Pumps, Annecy, has delivered and successfully commissioned special process pumps operating at high temperature for OMV Schwecht Refinery (Austria) on their latest TGU plant (Thermal Gas Unit).

A new type of process allows the refining of reject tar at very high temperatures (450°C) and gives CLYDEUNION Pumps a major reference in this new downstream oil market sector. This unique design of pumps and packages has been developed to maintain all parts in contact with the product at a high temperature and to limit thermal transfer to the bearings. Until now the TGU process has been in operation for more than 8000 operating hours, with the Annecy built pump package being indispensable to this very critical and precision temperature controlled process. A key factor to success was the excellent engineering leadership from Andre Faup who worked very closely with OMV’s start up team.

E-mail: smauvais@clydeunion.com