By Prof. Godwin J. Igwe
Continued from yesterday
In 2014, the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (NLNG) funded and sponsored our Modular Refinery Program with $2 million. This project can be viewed at the Centre for Gas, Refining & Petrochemicals, Institute of Petroleum Studies, University of Port Harcourt.
Within a space of 6-12 months, (in time and within budget), we set up a 2-storey building infrastructure with offices, lecture halls, auditorium, and laboratories. We ordered and installed a pilot modular refinery (for teaching, training, research and training).
We produced typical gasoline, kerosene, light diesel, heavy diesel (No.6 or fuel oil) blending stocks, and vacuum bottoms that represent products like asphalt. The results and products were produced in an environmentally safe manner, and are reproducible. Over 45 MSc students have trained and graduated from this program.
Components of the modular refinery (ASTM 2892) include Electrostatic field generator, Dosing pumps, Desalting chamber, Cylindrical measuring cylinders, Large cylindrical vessels, Reactor, Hot water bath, Debutanization trap, Crude oil drum, Distillation Unit, Boiler, Columns, LPG trap + Cryoplunger system, distributor and receiver systems, the Pot Still Column, the Computer Unit, where the graphic user interface (GUI) of the whole process is displayed and most command issued. It has two GUI’s, the TBP and the Pot Still. These are for performing the atmospheric and vacuum distillations. Through the communication port, the computer communicates with the equipment.
Finally, the vacuum pump and the compressor:
This demonstrates the feasibility of setting up modular refinery architecture with indigenous, passionate, capable and motivated professionals. For progress, technology should be devoid of politics; rather the best and brightest in the country will move the country forward away from dependency. Individuals alone cannot fund the modular infrastructure without sponsors and government support.
Stakeholders recognize that inadequate investment, lack of local capacity, poor economic structure, pipeline vandalism and other factors will continue to hinder the sector’s contribution, particularly in the area of job creation.
The oil and gas industry agreed that a sustainable and well-structured stakeholder management framework would address its peculiar needs and circumstances. The question is how to fix the challenges of inadequate private sector engagement and management, poor policy implementation, legacy issues, transparency, trust and security, political will, inadequate infrastructure, among other well-known issues.
To reduce unemployment for our teeming unemployed graduates, Government and private sectors must create an environment to capitalize on the downstream products from our oil and gas industries.
Each unit in oil and gas processing is a career employment opportunity because each step is a manufacturing process. When we make things, produce things, manufacture things, design things, we create employment opportunities for better living for our people.
Development will only come from innovative thinking of our people, and not from someone, somewhere else. Wealth under your feet is no guarantee of personal wealth. Competitive pricing elsewhere can render your product uneconomical? Energy is wealth. Energy is development. Energy is power. Energy is happiness. Energy is jobs, jobs, jobs.
We all agree that corruption is ubiquitous in Nigeria. The Federation Accounts Allocation shared monthly between Federal, States and local governments, plus the additional 13 per cent oil revenues, NDDC, and all other funds paid out as derivation fund, to oil-producing states, must be tied specifically, to verifiable number of jobs generated by each state based on modular refineries. Knowing that a goal without a plan will remain just a wish, the Federal Government, news media, and labour organizations, must monitor and publish monthly reports of the performance of each state.
Let our chemical engineers design, fabricate, build infrastructural framework, and provide services that will generate employment and investments.
In reality, a refinery is an organized and coordinated arrangement of manufacturing processes designed to produce physical and chemical changes in crude oil and natural gas.
Lastly, money is only important if you don’t have it. Nigeria has money (perceived, poorly managed by their custodians) and resources, and should utilize their Chemical Engineers to work on petrochemicals from natural gas, and crude oil. For example, from benzene, xylene, toluene, propylene, ethylene, methane, butanes, butylenes, butadienes and their derivatives, Nigeria could make products ranging from plastics, agricultural chemicals to cosmetics and perfumes, etc.
Starting from the time you get up in the morning and brush your teeth with a plastic handled tooth brush with synthetic fibre bristles, and put your head down on a polyurethane foam pillow, you are literally surrounded by petrochemicals.
Infrastructures for roads and bridges, schools, hotels, and industries will emerge to create a vibrant city.
The lack of skills for the extractive industries prevents Nigeria from provision of local content that generates domestic economic spillovers (World Bank, 2013).
Only Nigerians can solve their self-inflicted problems by providing resources, job skill sets of the future by making, producing, manufacturing goods and services for their citizens.
Capacity building is a prerequisite for economic development. Building a hospital without doctors and nurses is like building a refinery without skilled manpower. We need manpower to operate our refining and petrochemical infrastructures.
As Carl Sandburg said: “Nothing happens unless first a dream”.
Every program that fails or succeeds, fails or succeeds because of who is driving it, the gatekeeper, or the champion of that program. Leadership is a contest of functional practical ideas. It is in our best interest to make, produce, and manufacture products right here in Nigeria. Made in Nigeria is certainly our best investment for the future, starting with modular refineries. Concluded
Igwe (Ph.D., PE (Texas), FNSChE, FAIChE) is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at University of Port Harcourt.
