A Belarus-Cyprus entity will open a base oil rerefinery in Belarus, a $20 million investment.
The plants opening ceremony today will be attended by regional authorities and company officials. It is a public-private partnership between the Belorussian Ministry for Natural Resources, MDD-Bel and DVCH Management. It was established in 2012 and its goal is to establish a nationwide network for collecting and processing used oils and other chemical waste.
The rerefinery is located on a 14-hectares plot in the Krupki district, around 120 kilometers east of the capital Minsk. It includes a rerefinery with capacity to process 15,000 metric tons per year of used oil and a 10,800-ton tank farm connected with truck and railroad loading docks, according to MDD-Bel.
In the first phase the rerefinery can handle 15,000 tons of waste oil annually and can produce around 13,500 t/y of lower quality [API] Group I base oil and vacuum gasoil products, Dima Cherikover, managing partner of DVCH, told Lube Report on the sidelines of the Global Business Club’s Base Oils and Lubricants conference held in Moscow last week. We are planning an expansion to 40,000 t/y processing capacity, but at this moment we have frozen this effort because the base oil prices have dropped significantly and there is no economy in it, he said during an interview last week.
The rerefinery is being built in three stages, two of which are already finished. The DVCH-licensed technology includes used oil distillation, adsorption cleaning and a final hydrogenation process. The third stage envisages production of Group II base oils, Cherikover confirmed. The purpose of this plant is to recycle used mineral and synthetic oils, he said, adding that that the company is ready to invest additional funds for processing of used chemicals, vegetable and animal oils, along with other kinds of waste that contain hydrocarbons such as plastics and rubber.
DVCH-Eco is the company that handles the collection and transportation of the waste oils. Unique multiple-section vehicle cisterns have been put into operation to transport the used oils to the processing site without any environmental impact. A chain of a few hundred outlets for collection of waste oils with special 1- and 2- ton tanks have been already installed country-wide, Cherikover said, adding that the number of collection sites will grow to thousands in the future.
Cyprus-based MDD is an investment company, and its website states that it has years of experience in the management and implementation of advanced technologies in the petrochemical industry.