COMPANY PROFILE
2015
Kinetics Technology
www.kt-met.com/en | +39 06 602161
Excellence in the refining industry Editorial: Ajuanne Payne
A process engineering contractor with over 40 years’ experience, KT - Kinetics Technology, an Italian based company is a leader in providing solutions and services for the refinery industries. Since inception, KT has successfully completed more than 500 projects across five continents and has made the organic move into full EPC contracting. Andrea Vena, Commercial Director, talks to us here at Total World Energy about KT’s recent projects and significant investments in proprietary technologies… KT is an international process engineering contractor, subsidiary of Maire Tecnimont Group, with specialist expertise in the hydrocarbon processing industry. In recent years the company has evolved in to a full EPC contractor and has subsequently been awarded 20 EPC contracts over the past five years alone. Based in Rome, the company also operates as a provider and developer of proprietary technologies, with strong expertise
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in sulphur recovery facilities, gas processing, refinery process units, hydrogen and syngas production and process fired heaters. Their two main areas of specialty focus on Sulphur Recovery Units (SRU) and hydrogen production from steam reforming of hydrocarbons. KT is an industry leader in supplying SRU’s and Hydrogen production units and in the past decade has completed more than 100 projects in this field worldwide.
Andrea Vena states that: “We define ourselves as a mid-sized process engineering contractor. What is the meaning of ‘process engineering contractor’ - the meaning is that it is our business do lump sum turnkey projects, based on technology. “We have two main technologies in our business. One is for a hydrogen production unit, the other one is a sulphur recovery unit. We leverage on this technology - we don’t just sell the basic design, but
KT - Kinetics Technology we try to sell an EPC project based on our know-how and capabilities.” Established in 1971, KT has a long and successful history in the field of high temperature technologies. The company has been through a number of name changes over the years that have brought it to where it is today. “In 2010 we were acquired by Maire Tecnimont Group and we changed the name to Tecnimont KT,” explains Vena, “and in 2013 we changed our name again to KT. The reason was just to recall the brand, because the problem that we saw on the market was that everywhere they knew us as KTI. Since we’d changed the name several times it was quite hard to recognise that we were the same company. So now our name is KT, which is quite similar to the original one.”
KEY PROJECTS Just focusing on KT’s traditional product line, the company is one of the frontrunners in the industry. They are well positioned and well recognised and have built up a robust reputation for quality work and technological know-how. More recently in the past three years KT have re-positioned themselves to specifically target the refining industry, as well as their original areas of hydrogen and SRU’s. KT has demonstrated that, when targeting refinery projects valued at around EUR400 million, they are extremely competitive. One of the reasons behind this is that the company’s competitors are huge company’s targeting projects in the worth billions of euros, but in the more mid-sized projects KT has the kind of flexibility that these companies don’t have and are able to tailor their offering much more easily.
This has proven to be the case across both their traditional and new areas of business and the company has worked on some key projects in recent years that are a further testament to their reputation and expertise. “Recently in the last two years we have been awarded with very important projects in areas which are close to the areas of our know-how and capabilities,” explains Vena. “We have been awarded a hydro-cracker complex in Cameroon for Sonara. By Total, we have been awarded a very important project - the so-called Refinery Off-Gas (ROG) project in the Antwerp refinery. “We’re now going to sign a contract for a Delay Coker Unit. These three projects are in some way connected to hydrogen needs. We are trying to expand in areas which are close to what we are normally used to doing.” The Antwerp Refinery project for Total was awarded in 2014 and is an EPC contract worth around EUR200 million. The aim of the project is to
recover valuable gas, while keeping disruption to the refinery’s operations to a minimum. Vena goes in to detail, explaining that “the target for this project is to recover valuable gas from the gas which is normally flared inside the refinery. When I say ‘valuable gas’ I have in mind Ethane, because ethane is the feed for the downstream petrochemical complex. So, the target for Total was, to try and recover some of this valuable gas in order to feed the downstream producing plant. “There was very severe bidding for this project, which was involving us and some other contractors which are very reputable. For us, it was very challenging to demonstrate to the client that our level of competencies is the same as the other EPC contractors or even better. After one year of bids, we succeeded in being awarded this project, and the reason was
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that our project execution strategy was the best.” The technical constraints of this project lay in the construction activity. Due to the fact that the Antwerp refinery is a very crowded refinery, for safety reasons Total needed to minimise the construction at site and minimize any need to stop production. KT’s idea was to arrive at site with the modules - with the equipment and instrumentation ready to install and therefore minimise the activities at site. Coupled with the fact that their proposal was also the most competitive, KT was successful against their much larger competitors. “Now this project is ongoing, for more than eight months,” explains Vena. “We have a full staff of Total people in our offices, who are supervising our activities. The
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project is very challenging, both in terms of execution and in terms of schedule, because for Total time is of the essence.” In Cameroun, KT was awarded an EPC contract worth around EUR450 million for the Societè Nationale de Raffinage (SONARA). The project is scheduled for completion in 2017 and centres on the installation of a Hydrocracker unit for the refinery there. Vena goes in to further detail about the project: “In Cameroun the client is SONARA, which is the state-owned company for oil and gas. SONARA refinery is located in Limbe, Cameroun, which is not a place where you have a lot of infrastructure. Cameroon is completely dependent on Nigeria for crude oil supply and they have also their own crude oil - but, this crude oil is very heavy and has a lot of sulphur.
“So, in order to process this crude oil, you need to fit the refinery with special units which should be in the position to upgrade this heavy oil,” explains Vena. “The idea was to supply a Hydrocracker unit which processes the heavy oil and produces distillate. So, we have this Hydrocracker complex which also includes a hydrogen plant and a sulphur recovery unit plant. “We participated in this bid against very reputable EPC contractors and we succeeded. Once again, the winning card was the competencies and the execution strategy, because we spent a lot of time in Cameroon trying to maximise the local content. In Cameroon it’s very difficult to manage, for example, the construction. “We were clever and went there to better understand what companies can support us during
KT - Kinetics Technology this activity. We spent more than two months in Cameroon trying to understand the local content, which was the key factor for being successful. “This is also a key value of our company – we are very flexible, we are not rigid. Whenever we go to some new geography or new country, we can immediately mobilise our people to better understand what the conditions are there. On one side, we can say that we have demonstrated we are competitive, we understand the complexities of the project and on the other side we have also demonstrated we understand the local conditions and geography. These were the two success points.”
explains Vena. “The overall project was an H-Oil plant and in this plant there was a sulphur recovery unit. “There were plenty of competitors, more than ten and once again we were successful a couple of years ago because we understood the local construction.” Vena goes further, explaining what the key is for this type of bid: “Whenever you bid for an EPC contract, one of the most important things is to properly estimate the risk of construction in the country. Bulgaria is not a very well-developed country - the
local manpower needs to be well instructed and to be integrated with ex-patriate people, so our success was in properly identifying the right mixture of ex-patriate and local people for the construction. This project was awarded two years ago and just one month ago the plant was successfully started up.”
HYDROGEN PLANT PROJECT WORK Hydrogen is a very important part of KT’s portfolio and in recent years they have been awarded several hydrogen plant projects. There has
SRU PROJECTS Sulphur Removal Units, or SRU’s, can be found in the majority of all oil and gas processing facilities throughout the world. Although not a profit-making unit for the operator, it is an essential processing step to regulate the discharge of sulphur compounds in to the atmosphere. The desulfurizing process, or ‘Claus Process’, recovers sulphur from the gaseous hydrogen sulphide you find in natural gas and from the by-product gases produced when refining crude oil and in other industrial processes. One significant SRU project for KT was for client Lukoil in the Burgas refinery, Bulgaria. Valued at an estimated EUR50 million and completed in 2015, the EPC project centres around the installation of two identical SRU trains. “This sulphur recovery unit is part of a big investment which has been made by Lukoil in this refinery in Burgas, which is the greatest refinery in Eastern Europe,”
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been an ever-increasing demand to reduce more and more emissions and by-products from the refinery processes – which involves hydrogen. Whenever there is a need to upgrade crude oil, there is a need for hydrogen. Vena goes in to detail about a recent project award in this area: “One project which was delivered successfully a couple of months ago was again for Lukoil, in Perm. Perm is an industrial Russian city which is located on the Ural Mountains. “Again, this was completely new geography for us. If you went there you would see that the minimum temperature is minus 47 degrees, which causes difficulties in design because you have to cope with these low temperatures. There are also severe constraints in designing due to the application of Russian rules, which force you to think in a different way.”
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“Whenever you have a technology this is something which is living and you need to feed it every day”
The Perm Project is worth an estimated EUR45 million, was completed in 2015 and is designed to produce a maximum 40,000 Nm3/h. KT has displayed repeatedly that their flexible approach and attention to detail have ensured their success in continually winning projects of a high calibre. Another key factor that contributes to the company’s continued growth and success is its focus on fostering strong partnerships with companies. Vena states that “this is a part of our DNA. Our company is a mid-sized company. We try to have a lot of alliances so the key words for us are ‘competencies and alliances’ and we have in place several alliances with big contractors like Saipem, like Technip. We are now trying to approach Tecnicas Reunidas because we understand that the key factor for growth, especially
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for a company like us which in refineries is a newcomer, is to find cooperation with others.”
CONTINUED FOCUS ON RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT As a core value of KT, they continuously focus on the development of proprietary technologies and investment in research and development. Vena explains that “when you have your own technology you have to maintain it, to benchmark it against the competitors’ technology. Whenever you have a technology this is something which is living - and you need to feed it every day. “Just to give you an idea, 5% of our working man hours are devoted to research and development. We are trying to do a lot of things in that area, especially in sulphur recovery units. We are developing a new process to recover sulphur
from H2S, producing hydrogen. We are developing a new technology which is named H2S Cracking which is on one side recovering sulphur, and on the other side producing hydrogen. “We are trying to go for zero emissions, capping SO2 emissions and producing hydrogen. This is something which is ongoing. On paper this technology works, now we are building a pilot plant to demonstrate it and we hope that in the future we will be in the position to scale up from the pilot plant to an industrial plant. This is something also which characterises our company trying to always pursue continued innovation in our technology. With a concerted focus on innovation, research and development, KT has ensured that they stay at the forefront of the market over the past four decades. The company has
built up a formidable amount of expertise in their areas of specialty and continue to win important and technically difficult projects with major clients. Vena explains that “the key to KT’s success is the passion of the people, is the motivation and is the fact that really we are completely devoted to the client. This is something that you cannot see in bigger companies. We are always open, we are always keen to understand the client’s needs, to always try to follow what they want and try to be flexible. “If you could ask to one of our clients what they think of KT, maybe this is the answer that they would give you – that we are always close to them. Our key words would be - ‘put a desk in the clients office’, because if you are close to the client, you may understand him, his mentality, his needs and his problems,” concludes Vena
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