Golaghat, Assam, India | Numaligarh Refinery Ltd.
Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL), a subsidiary of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited is a public sector undertaking under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. The refinery located at Golaghat District in Assam was commissioned in the year 2000 with a crude processing capacity of 3 million tonnes per annum (MMTPA) to process indigenous crude of Assam. NRL intends to install a parallel new refinery of crude processing capacity of 6 MMTPA to expand its capacity from present 3 MMTPA to 9 MMTPA. The project is integrated with a new crude oil pipeline from Paradip (Odisha) to Numaligarh (Assam) and a product pipeline from Numaligarh to Siliguri where NRL has its own Marketing Terminal for distribution of product. The project has been named as Numaligarh Refinery Expansion Project (NREP).
The proposed Storage tank of this new refinery, which are used for the bulk containment of fluids at different stages of the refinery process, was suggested to locate in area where the soils are weak and compressible. Bearing capacity under heavy loads is always a challenge so it was necessary to do ground improvement to increase soil bearing capacity and control settlement before construction of storage tank. The client decided to go with conventional ground improvement technique using stone column. But they have decided to provide a layer of geogrid in between the stone blanket layer above the stone columns.
It was suggested by Consultant to use TechGrid Biaxial Geogrid (TGB 200) above stone columns to minimize settlement. The Techgrid Biaxial Geogrid (TGB 200) having 200 kN/m ultimate tensile strength on both the directions are manufactured from high tenacity polyester filament yarns with molecular weight ≥25000 g/mol when measured in accordance with GRI-GG8 / ASTM D4603 and carboxyl end groups ≤ 30 mmol/Kg when measured in accordance with GRI GG7 / ASTM D2455.
The project completed successfully and performing to the intended purpose, to the satisfaction of client and contractor.
