english - STEAG

Leuna
Refinery Power Plant
www.steag.com

Power and heat for the future
Efficient energy supply for the
Leuna refinery complex
As fifth biggest electricity producer in Germany, with ultramodern
power plants in and outside Germany and a variety of
services, STEAG GmbH safeguards the energy supply of the
future – reliably, efficiently, and with low environmental impact.
STEAG blazes the trail for the energy sources biomass,
biogas, mine gas, geothermics, wind and solar thermics. The
engineers of STEAG Energy Services GmbH develop, build
and operate power plants all over the world and are experts
for the modernization of existing plants and for made-tomeasure
energy supply which goes easy on the climate and
at the same time is economical.
Power plants at home and abroad
STEAG operates eleven power plants at ten locations in
Germany with an installed capacity of about 7,500 MW; nine
of these plants use hard coal as primary energy source. At
two sites, each of which integrates an industrial power plant,
refinery by-products also are used to produce steam, compressed
air and electricity. Most of the electricity from hard
coal is supplied to industrial and public utilities. The customers
include RWE, EnBW and Deutsche Bahn, the German
Railways. Where there is a demand for it, cogeneration –
the simultaneous production of power and useful heat – is
practiced. This heat either is used for heating purposes or
is purchased by industrial enterprises in the form of process
heat for their production processes. Outside Germany, too,
the company contributes to public power supply with three
hard-coal-fired power plants, capacity about 1,700 MW, in
Turkey, Colombia and the Philippines. The efficient power
plants of STEAG make an active contribution to a secure and
sustainable supply of energy.
The Leuna refinery power plant is located on the grounds of
the Leuna chemical park, one of the biggest industrial chemicals
sites in Germany. The power plant supplies the refinery
at the site with electricity, process steam, compressed air,
process water, feedwater and cooling water. The supply of
energy to the refinery in Leuna was the first project of its kind
worldwide. Up until then, the oil companies had financed,
built and operated their power plants themselves. In Leuna,
for the first time an external partner, STEAG, was given a
chance. Thanks to STEAG’s longstanding know-how, it was
and is possible to use refinery residues as fuel despite stiffer
environmental protection regulations.
Symbiosis of power plant and refinery
The smooth cooperation between power plant and refinery is
important for supplying the site. This symbiosis has functioned
almost without a hitch since 1996. One chief reason
for this is the close coordination between power plant and
refinery concerning current energy consumption and operative
measures.
Via online links each party is well informed about the current
operating data of the other party. This coordination is backed
up by long-term and medium-term planning. Power plant
and refinery begin at midyear to draw up the schedule for the
coming year.
STEAG also continually invests in the power plant site in order
to meet the changing needs of the refinery. For example,
paralleling the expansion of the refinery processing capacity
from just under 10 million tons of crude to 12 million tons
annually, investments were made in 30 projects at the power
plant to increase its reliability and energy efficiency. In refinery
power plants, capacity is not as important as availability, because
the refinery is dependent on an uninterrupted supply
of energy.

The power plant
Site plan
Characteristic of the Leuna refinery power plant is that it
self-sufficiently supplies the refinery and installations belonging
to the complex with electricity, process steam at
various pressure levels, compressed air and various process
waters, feedwaters and cooling water. The fuels used are
very viscous distillation and conversion residues from the
refinery process. Owing to the sophisticated environmental
technology of STEAG, especially the highly efficient flue gas
desulfurizing (FGD) system, these residues are turned into
raw materials again.
The residues are delivered via pipework at a temperature of
about 150 °C. The fuels are stored for the interim in tanks
in the power plant and then preheated to around 230 °C. In
addition, excess fuel gas from the refinery and synthesis gas
from a methanol plant find use.
The fuel is injected into the boiler at a temperature of 230 °C.
There it burns and heats the water in the boiler tubes to
make steam. The steam drives the turbines and is transformed
into electricity in the generators or supplied directly to
the refinery as process steam.
Annually, 250,000 tons of these high-viscosity oils, as the
black mass is termed, are processed in this way in the Leuna
refinery power plant. For one thing, this saves disposal costs
and, for another, it reduces the use of fossil energy sources.
The refinery needs large quantities of steam at differing pressure
levels to drive pumps and turbine-driven units as well as
for mass transfer. Process water and boiler feedwater for the
refinery come from the water treatment plant. The required
cooling water is made available from a closed recooling water
circuit constructed specifically for the refinery.
The power plant also operates a water demineralizing plant.
It works on the reverse osmosis principle and, with its capacity
of 510 m 3 / h, is one of the biggest in Europe.
In addition, the condensates returning from the refinery
(410 m 3 / h) are treated in a dedicated condensate polishing
plant and returned to the process water and feedwater.
1
2
2
4
5
18 18
3 3
3 3
6
18 19
17
7
12
11 11 11
10 10 10
8 8 8 9
18
7
7
16
17 17
13
14
20
15 15 15
22 21
23 24 24
25 27 26
1 Gatehouse
2 Fuel tank
3 Fuel tank
4 Fuel supply / preheating
5 Fuel supply / preheating
6 Fuel supply / preheating
7 Boilerhouse with DeNo x
8 Wet electrostatic precipitator
9 FGD wastewater treatment plant
10 Scrubber
11 Quench cooler / stack
12 Quench cooler / stack
13 FGD wastewater treatment plant
14 Gypsum silo
15 NH 3
supply system
16 Turbine house
17 Transformer
18 Transformer
19 Switchgear building and control room
20 Switchgear building
21 Demin water plant
22 Demin water plant
23 Demin water plant
24 Demin water plant
25 Cooling towers
26 Cooling towers
27 Cooling towers

Data and facts *
Installed capacity 162 MW (of which 56 MWel equivalent = 204 MW th
)
Useful electricity output
Steam and compressed air output
Fuel input
about 558 GWh / a
about 282 GWh / a
about 330,000 tce
Components 1 demineralization plant (510 t / h)
1 HP steam turbine (33.6 MWel)
1 IP steam turbine (38.3 MWel)
1 LP steam turbine (34.2 MWel)
3 oil-fired boilers (178 t / h each)
1 gas-fired boiler (156.6 t / h)
Initial start-up 1996
Operator
Owner
RKB Raffinerie-Kraftwerks-Betriebs GmbH
STEAG-Raffinerie-Kraftwerk-Sachsen-Anhalt GmbH
STEAG refers to the gross maximum capacity under nominal
conditions as installed capacity. This is the continuous
output that can be attained under normal conditions. It is
limited by the weakest part of the plant (bottleneck), is determined
by measurement and converted to normal conditions;
stated in MW, calculated as MW electric and equivalent
(thermal output).
The standard coal equivalent or ton of coal equivalent
(tce) is a commonly used unit of measure in Central Europe,
though not a statutory unit of measure, to compare the energy
content of primary energy sources. 1 ton coal equivalent =
29.3076 gigajoules (GJ) = 8.141 thermal megawatt-hours
(MWh th
).
A site with a tradition
The Leuna refinery power plant is located on the grounds
of the Leuna chemical complex, which is very well known
for its past history and outstanding developments. Leuna
gained an international reputation through its coal hydrogenation
processes. Nobel Prizes for scientists at the site in the
1920s and 1930s attest to this. The changeover to the raw
material petroleum took place in several stages in the early
1950s. After the turnabout in East Germany in 1989, the Elf
Group (today TOTAL) won a contract to build a completely
new refinery in Leuna. This was the birth of TOTAL-Raffinerie
Mitteldeutschland (TRM), the most up-to-date, most efficient
refinery in Europe.
STEAG, which already had built a combined-cycle power
plant and a demineralizing plant in Leuna, was commissioned
by Elf to build the refinery power plant. All in all this
was a project of superlatives, for it was the biggest German-
French economic investment of the postwar period. After just
about two years of construction, the industrial power plant
took up commercial operation in December 1996.
* as at December 31, 2011

STEAG GmbH
Rüttenscheider Strasse 1–3
45128 Essen
Germany
Phone +49 201 801-00
Fax +49 201 801-6388
Email info@steag.com
www.steag.com
RKB Raffinerie-Kraftwerks-Betriebs GmbH
Werkteil II Bau 3691
06237 Leuna
Germany
Phone +49 3461 548-2222
Fax +49 3461 548-2209
Email info-rkb@steag.com
V-UK, as at June 2012