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PROJECT ACTIVITIES
SHELL MDS PRODUCT QUALITIES EXCEED
EXPECTATIONS
The 12,500 barrel per day Middle Distillate Syn
thesis (MDS) plant at Bintulu, Sarawak, Malaysia
has been in operation for over a year. According
to T. van Herwijnen of Shell MDS (Malaysia) Sdn
Bhd, speaking at a liquefied natural gas con
ference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in October,
the project startup proved to be slow. Only after
1 year, did plant output approach design
capacity. The problems that had to be resolved
ranged from the interference of lightning strikes
on the electronic safeguarding systems to
development problems which were connected
with first-of-its-kind applications. The latter ap
plied not so much to the new technology itself
but to other units in the plant like the conven
tional air separation plant which is the world's
largest at 2,500 tons per day oxygen.
NATURAL GAS
TABLE 1
Shell MDS Products
By their nature, products from carbon monoxide
and hydrogen are extremely clean. They are al
most completely paraffinic and contain few con
taminants such as sulfur or nitrogen. In fact, in
dustrial analytical methods established for such
contaminants in refined crude oil-derived
products have lower cut-off levels for their
measurement ranges that are higher than the
levels of such impurities in the MDS products.
The quality
MIDDLE DISTILLATE FUEL PROPERTIES
of the products from the commercial
plant is equal to and in several respects better
than predicted on the basis of the pilot plant
tests. Table 1 shows some properties for the
middle distillate fuels. Given their exceptional
quality, they are ideal, high-value blending com
ponents for upgrading traditional products to
meet high product quality standards. At