SANTIAGO DE CUBA.-With vast experience in innovation, the staff of the Hermanos Díaz Oil Refinery – one of the four that process this fuel in the country – adapted “facilities where the heavy crude that the country acquired before the oil blockade announced by the Trump Administration was refined, and to “make run” the national crude,” explained Irene Barbado Lucio, general director of the entity, belonging to the Cuba-Petroleum Union (Cupet), to Granma.

“Previously we had managed to process imported heavy crude with a solvent that brought it to 16 degrees API; allowing it to become medium crude, because our industry was designed to do it with light crude; but we didn’t think about doing it with domestic crude,” explained engineer Víctor Manuel Díaz Despaigne, leader of the multidisciplinary group that materialized the technological innovation.

Given the urgent need for naphtha to continue extraction from oil wells, the Hermanos Díaz refinery managed to obtain, from the national crude oil—highly viscous, with a lot of sulfur and other contaminants—“that both this derivative and fuel oil and diesel be made available to the country. It has been a parallel process to that of the Petroleum Research Center, characterized by much study and experimentation,” added Barbado Lucio , also a member of the Central Committee of the Party.

“Another run of domestic crude is planned, as part of the continuous improvement of industrial processes, which is intensified with this type of oil, to achieve quality derivatives and the essential care of the environment,” concluded Barbado Lucio.

RESEARCH AND RESULTS

At a recent meeting of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, with members of the National Innovation Council (CNI), the technology for the use of national crude oil, also developed by the Center for Petroleum Research (Ceinpet), based on thermoconversion, was announced.

With this, the Head of State emphasized, “we broke a criterion, a taboo that existed in the country, that national crude oil could not be refined, that it could not be used for other things, and we practically had it condemned to be used directly in a group of thermoelectric plants.”

WHAT DOES IT CONSIST OF?

Thermoconversion is a process that allows the improvement of the properties of heavy and extra-heavy crude oil (such as that from the northern oil belt, which is currently the most available and exploited in the country despite its high density, viscosity and sulfur content), by favoring the destruction of some of its most complex compounds through controlled heating.

According to a press report from the Presidency, engineer Irenaldo Pérez Cardoso, deputy director of Cupet, explained that the technology basically deals with reducing the viscosity of crude oil without the need to mix it with naphtha, a product that has been in short supply due to the intensified blockade, the persecution of fuels since 2019 and now the energy blockade.

Pérez Cardoso announced the decision to install a pilot plant at the Sergio Soto refinery in Cabaiguán, Sancti Spíritus, and that it will be done there to take advantage of the existing conditions: water, steam, electricity, and above all the expertise of his team, which has been processing this crude oil since 2010.

The implementation of this innovation also includes a second stage, aimed at catalytic development from Cuban laterites; “that is, with our natural resources, to reduce its sulfur content, which is another great challenge of Cuban crude.”

More source -> https://www.presidencia.gob.cu/es/noticias/el-petroleo-crudo-cubano-si-se-puede-refinar-audio/

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