Shell GOAL Venture Project

The Shell Geismar Olefins Alcohol (GOAL) Venture Project was a portfolio of integrated projects designed to provide new capacity and capability at Shell Chemical Company’s Geismar Chemical Plant in Louisiana. Fluor provided front-end engineering, engineering, procurement and construction field support of an alpha olefins (AO) and internal olefins plant. Fluor was also awarded under separate contract the overall construction management for the entire GOAL Venture program.

Fluor's scope of work included the two main units: AO-3 and ID-3. The AO project was a grass roots AO-3 unit adjacent to existing SHOP-2 (AO/ID-2) units. The new unit produced 700 million pounds per year of alpha olefins from ethylene by oligomerization. The unit also produced a C18+ product, which was fed to the ID-3 unit.

ID-3 was an isomerization/disproportionation unit. It provided an additional 100 million pounds per year of internal olefins product.

Client's Challenge

GOAL Venture is in support of the continued growth for Shell in alcohol and derivative, co-monomer and polyalphaolefin markets. The new facilities will provide significant additional capacity and use existing Shell process technology.

Alpha olefins are isomerized to internal olefins. AO products include polymer grade C4, as well as C6, C8, C10, C12, C14 and C16. These are sold for polymer production (C4-C8), polyalpha olefin (PAO) lubricants and detergents.

Fluor's Solution

The project included a new AO-3 unit and modifications to the existing adjacent AO-2 unit. The ID-3 Project included significant debottlenecking and modifications to the existing ID-2 unit, including a new C15/16 East column and Syltherm furnace. Three cuts were produced: C11/12, C13/14 and C15/16. These were fed to OXO alcohol units to produce alcohols for detergent manufacture.

Fluor was also responsible for the feasibility phase work on a new column for ID-1 to allow early production of C15/16 before ID-3 and the new alcohol plant were on line.

Fluor Philippines provided detailed engineering. The scope of work included PDS modeling, ISOs, pipe stress, structural engineering and design, electrical and instrumentation design and process hydraulics.

Conclusion

The Shell GOAL Venture project was successfully completed and operational in November 2001.