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With the major overhaul carried out as part of the turnaround at the Schwechat Refinery, MAN Energy Solutions once again demonstrates its organizational talent in the cross-functional project management.

OMV, which is headquartered in Vienna, is a listed oil, gas and petrochemical corporation and one of Austria’s largest industrial concerns. OMV and MAN Energy Solutions have a long and successful business relationship, and we have been arranging spare parts orders and service calls at the Berlin and Oberhausen sites through framework agreements for many years. The Schwechat Refinery operated by OMV also uses FCC reactor components from Deggendorf. Europe’s largest inland refinery is also the only one in the country, so if Schwechat is out of operation, supplies dry up. Around half of Austria’s requirements for base commodities like gasoline, diesel, heating oil and kerosene are covered by the refinery near Vienna.

The exceptional complexity of the activities planned and carried out was the determining factor in how long the turnaround would take. So the narrow timeframe of six weeks was very challenging.

Helmut Zwickl, Project Manager

Herculean task for Field Service in Oberhausen


Under Austria’s Pressure Equipment Act, refineries have to undergo a comprehensive overhaul every six years, and it is always a highly complex task. When the turnaround for the refinery’s petrochemical operations happened between June and
 August 2023, PrimeServ Industries was one of 50 partner companies assisting the Austrian oil corporation with this task. Service in Oberhausen undertook the general overhaul of several machine trains that make up the heart of the refinery.


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The FCC core team with the Deggendorf team (in red as usual)
Field Service, the Oberhausen workshop and IGC colleagues were on site with 67 of their own employees and a further 23 from subcontractors. They overhauled a total of ten turbocompressors, one process gas screw compressor, three steam
turbines, two helical gear units, and two planetary gear trains. Coordinating with other firms and technical crews so as to ensure that everything went smoothly was a particular challenge. “PrimeServ Industries has demonstrated its expertise when
it comes to mammoth projects like this in Europe in particular in recent years. Our outstanding professional quality combined with precise planning, unfailing adherence to schedules and reliability left OMV satisfied once more,” says Michael Siegmund,
 Head of Field Service Oberhausen. “Now they can rest assured that their machines and systems will run for another six years.” “The major overhaul is representative of projects we are concentrating on: large turnarounds with which we
achieve great customer loyalty and which also have a knock-on effect for new business,” says Carsten Achtelik, Head of Product Center OBH, explaining the thinking. “We are also positioning ourselves with references in the third-party segment
with Omnicare – that is now a key part of our service.”

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Sossio Capasso, Sasha Hübner and other MAN colleaguesraising a centrifugal compressor housing cover
FCC plant with Y-piece (in foreground)
Machine parts were overhauled in the Oberhausen workshop and the work is still going on for spare parts that were not used. This modus operandi required precise preplanning of capacity and the necessary flexibility to be able to respond appropriately
to unscheduled challenges in Oberhausen. The team proved that they had got it right when some machine parts required more corrective maintenance than originally planned. By working extra shifts, the Oberhausen workshop was able to carry out the additional
work with only minimal delays to the project as a whole. During and following completion of work on the overhaul, three truckloads of stator parts and rotor assemblies plus seals were sent to the service workshop in Oberhausen for repair.

Deggendorf specifically called on and involved too

In 2019, MAN ES in Deggendorf embarked on a feasibility study for overhauling the catalytic section of the FCC plant. In fluid catalytic cracking, heavy hydrocarbons are split into light and higher-order hydrocarbons, which are then processed into gasoline or olefins (such as propylene), for example, in the refinery. The prefabrication order was placed back in 2021, as the fabrication element required relevant advance work. For the overhaul itself, Deggendorf then dispatched around 158 workers to the construction site, around half of whom were its own personnel. “The exceptional complexity of the activities planned and carried out by DWE® was the determining factor in how long the turnaround would take. So the narrow timeframe of six weeks was very challenging,” says Project Manager Helmut Zwickl, who goes on: “At the end of the day, we managed to fulfill the customer’s expectations again, with MAN ES particularly standing out among all the subcontractors according to OMV.” Successful cooperation over many years in the core business creates the basis for new projects: “Green decarbonization solutions like methanol and synthetic fuels have been positioned in the wake of the project,” Christian Obermeier from Sales in Deggendorf explains. 


The OMV Turnaround 2023 in numbers:

– Major overhaul with shutdown from 29 May to 28 July 2023
– 31 projects involving approx. 3,500 employees from 50 partner companies, including around 150 from MAN ES
– 1.2 million hours worked
– 18 process heaters, 121 columns/reactors
– 93 compressors, turbines and pumps
– 513 heat exchangers, 1,800 safety valves
– 34,000 m2 of insulation and 4,000 m of pipework replaced
– 8,000 metric tons of scaffolding used
– 500,000 bolts replaced
– 2,000 bicycles used

500000
bolts replaced
34000
m²
of insulation replaced

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