Repsol

Our actions to improve water management in refineries in Spain

Our action plans for 2010 focused mainly on water reuse, increasing the use of recycled water, and improving awareness of fresh water consumption. We have also invested in remodeling and improving installations toward these aims.

• Puertollano Refinery: We took action to prevent possible breakdowns, achieving savings in maintenance costs and an operating improvement of around €400,000/year. We made modifications at the processing plant to increase airing capacity (from 12% to 17%,), resulting in more effective purification and reduced energy consumption in the air supply blowers and reduced emissions of VOCs from biological processing. In addition, new emergency ponds were built to prevent overflows in the event of heavy rain. These ponds are capable of collecting 104,000 m3, which, added to the 23,000 m3 which the installation already had, makes a total of 127,000 m3. In 2010, the last of the four ponds entered into service with a volume of 3,500 m3.
• A Coruña Refinery: We developed improvement plans to optimize the water recycled water from tertiary processing, guaranteeing its quality. Moreover, we took action to reduce water consumption through awareness and the search for opportunities for savings, achieving savings of 134,499m3 as compared to 2009, and financial results of approximately €87,000/year.
• Petronor Refinery: We undertook the first phase of remodeling our water processing installations, increasing capacity, reducing odors, and improving the quality of the water processed. We are planning a second phase to update the installations in the next two years.
• Cartagena Refinery: We took action to increase our use of recycled water in hydraulic tests on tanks, which means a reduction in water consumption of 1,500 m3/day and savings estimated at €130,000.
• Tarragona Refinery: We launched campaigns to reduce waste by locating possible leaks in underground systems, achieving a reduction in the flow of spills amounting to 5m3/h. Furthermore, we are planning additional action, including modifications to the dissolved air flotation (DAF) plant to reduce spills and to replace fresh water with recycled water from the coking plant, with savings estimated between €76,000 and €147,000/year in the latter case. In addition, we remodeled the airing system for biological processing to eliminate odors released.