Shell Chemicals is one of the world leaders in base chemicals (lower olefins and aromatics) and intermediates (like solvents, ethylene oxide, olefins, phenol). For each of these products, Shell Chemicals ranks among the top three largest producers.

The Stanlow plant covers about 77 hectares in the industrial heartland of the North West of England. It is close to the sites of Shell UK Oil Products, Shell Lubricants, Shell.s Thornton Research Centre, Associated Octel and other major petrochemical companies.

Shell Chemicals in Stanlow needed to replace their existing cold softened water production units.

These units supply both the chemicals manufacturing complex and the oil refinery.

Shell also was intent on outsourcing the operation and maintenance of the softened water services to an experienced operator so also better focus on its core business.

Veolia Water provided Shell Chemicals with a compact modular filtration and softening system, giving Shell the flexibility to meet future site development and demands.

The system includes the following features:

• compact installation that can be used in parallel with the existing plant to process a total of 3,500 m3/day with a treated water quality of less than 2 ppm total hardness
• containerised systems with adequate on site redundancy to meet production peaks during start-up and abnormal conditions

Veolia Water's solution includes the operation and maintenance of the plant over a minimum 10 years service period.

The technology used is based on:

• a two-stage filter with chemical dosing
• a conventional base exchange softener