Modified revamp process to reduce energy use in an SDA unit

Dr. Sunil Kumar is a the Senior Principal Scientist at CSIR-Indian Institute of Petroleum, Dehradun. He has 14 yr of experience in the refining and chemical industries. His professional interests include flow scheme synthesis, simulation, design, scale-up, debottlenecking, pinch analysis and the process integration of chemical and refining processes, as well as the development of energy and capital efficient distillation, extraction and absorption-based separation processes using experimental data and process simulation tools. Dr. Kumar received a BTech degree from HBTI Kanpur, an MTech degree from IIT Kanpur and a PhD from IIT Roorkee.

Shrikant Nanoti was head of the Refining Technology division of the Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP), Dehradun, superannuated in November 2016, and is working as a consultant at IIP. Mr. Nanoti has a doctorate in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, and has more than 30 yr of experience in the development and scale-up of separation-based technologies, process design, process integration and pinch analysis for the petroleum refining and petrochemical industries. He has published more than 40 research papers in national and international journals, and has eight patents to his credit.

Dr. M. O. Garg is an expert in petroleum refining and petrochemicals, and has been instrumental in developing and commercializing a large number of technologies in Indian refineries. A graduate from Nagpur University and a post graduate from IIT Kanpur, Dr. Garg completed his PhD in solvent extraction from the University of Melbourne. His areas of specialization include solvent extraction, process integration, advanced control, simulation and modeling. He has published more than 260 papers in journals and holds 50 national and international patents. He has been elected a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineers.

R. Amutha is working as Assistant Manager in the Process Engineering department at CPCL’s Manali Refinery. She has more than 6 yr of experience in lube production facilities, including solvent extraction, solvent dewaxing and solvent deoiling units. She has handled several operational and energy improvement activities in the lube complex at CPCL.

N. V. N. Nandagopalu is the head of Operations and Technical Services at Chennai Petroleum Corp. Ltd.’s Cauvery Basin refinery. He holds a chemical engineering degree from Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, India, and an MS degree in business management from the University of Madras, Chennai, India. He has more than 27 yr of experience in refinery operations, including production, advanced process control, production planning, refinery business optimization, refinery scheduling, shipping, process engineering, energy management and environment management.