INEOS Lavéra - France Hydrocarbon processing industry

The INEOS Lavéra refinery is the second-largest refinery in France with an annual capacity of 10 million tons.

The refinery is ISO 14001 certified. It has the capacity to produce the entire range of oil products (gas and fuel), as well as a variety of products for the chemical industry. With its unique hydrocracking capacity, INEOS Lavéra is the market leader in France for the supply of diesel fuel to the domestic market.

The Lavéra site employs 1,000 people (refinery and petrochemicals units), including 250 engineers and has an international research centre.

INEOS Lavéra generates effluent high wastewater with high hydrocarbons load which is collected and sent to on-site processing facilities (pre-settling tanks, API, filtration and biological treatment).

In managing the facilities, INEOS Lavéra's main goals were:

• comply with all environmental regulations covering discharges into the Mediterranean
• improve technical performance by increasing the reliability of the wastewater treatment process
• optimize operating costs of the wastewater treatment plant

To achieve these goals, INEOS wanted a specialist service provider to operate and maintain its wastewater treatment facilities.

To meet INEOS Lavéra's needs, Veolia Water signed an operation and maintenance contract for the collection (refinery pumping stations, pre-settling tanks, storm water tanks) and treatment of oily wastewater, as well as the implementation of a series of measures designed to improve existing facilities:

• financing and the optimization of the wastewater treatment process: automation (sludge scraping and extraction stations) and centrifugation treatment of sludge
• implementation of a nitrogen-treatment research and development program, in partnership with Anjou Recherche, Veolia Water's R&D centre
• in the mid-term, realization of a project to limit VOC emissions from the wastewater treatment plant's tanks

Technology used: physico-chemical and biological solutions with a capacity of 1,8 MGD (7,000 m3/d)