With dads to work: the oil refining complex holds family tour for Father’s Day
Father’s Day celebrated on the third Sunday of October was held in Nizhnekamsk. For this occasion, the city developed a programme of family excursions called Father's Week in Nizhnekamsk. Its participants visited the Nizhnekamsk power plant, a fire station, a mosque and a cinema. The culmination of the excursions was a visit to the oil refinery. Here, the guests were shown a gas condensate processing plant, industrial laboratories and a local wastewater treatment shop. Read more about all this in a report of Realnoe Vremya.
Amazing things are nearby
Students from the School No. 10 and Lyceum No. 37 together with their dads learned where motor gasoline, diesel fuel, kerosene and other petroleum products are produced in Nizhnekamsk. A family excursion for Father's Day was held on the territory of TAIF-NK JSC.
“This excursion was initiated by the Chairman of the Nizhnekamsk Fathers' Council, Director of School No. 10 Andrey Blinkin. The main goal is to show where parents work, and also to give fathers and children the opportunity to spend more time together. A visit to our enterprise is the cherry on the cake at the end of the excursion week. We want to show the children the life of our enterprise. At the plant, you can not only earn money, but also receive cultural, moral, and spiritual development. We have something to brag about,” emphasised head of the technical training group Anton Tukhvatullin.
First, the excursionists were shown the Gasoline Plant. Having made a circle around the territory of the second production facility, the bus stopped near the heart of the plant — a gas condensate processing unit with a capacity of up to a million tonnes per year.
“We advocate for the continuity of generations, we want young people to actively replace veterans. Work in production is stability and confidence in the future. During such excursions, children learn in an accessible form where raw materials come from, what happens to them inside industrial installations and how finished gasoline is then poured into fuel trucks and sent to gas stations. I am sure that many of the children will come to work for us in the future,” noted assistant to the director of the Gasoline Plant for general affairs Ildar Sadykov.
The fathers and children also inspected the central control room, the loading and unloading rack with railway scales, the automatic automobile filling station and the general plant facilities complex. The excursion participants dropped in on the industrial laboratory. Its employees conduct about 11,000 tests per month on raw materials arriving at the plant, as well as finished marketable products.
“The motor gasolines that arrive at the gas stations are tested in these laboratories. This is also where we issue the quality certificate. This is a document that accompanies each batch of fuel. It contains the name of the shift engineer of our plant laboratory,” deputy head of the Industrial Laboratory Olga Kalacheva said.
For some, oil is food
The acquaintance with the oil refinery continued in the local wastewater treatment workshop. This facility is unique. Its operation is based on a closed cycle. All industrial wastewater coming here from process units and industrial sites, after very deep cleaning, is not discharged into open water bodies, but is sent back to production needs.
Head of the workshop Ruslan Valeyev told the excursionists about how the wastewater treatment process occurs and why this facility is so important for preserving water resources in more detail.
“The treatment facilities are fully automated, and a multi-stage treatment system is used in their operation. The shop consists of several units: preliminary, physical and chemical, biological treatment, desalination and dehydration. The design load is 500 cubic metres per hour. This is a very large flow. Industrial wastewater is divided into salty and fresh. They are not combined into one collector, so that the entire flow does not have to be cleaned of salts later,” assured them Ruslan Valeyev.
According to him, special bacteria are involved in the final stage of wastewater treatment, for which harmful impurities serve as food.
“Activated sludge is a biocenosis of colonies of bacteria and protozoa. We call them animals. Each population plays a certain role in the bioreactor. They eat up oil products and use them to generate energy. They also have their own life cycle. To prevent microorganisms from getting sick and dying prematurely, we carefully monitor the quality of incoming wastewater,” he added.
“Explaining it in words is one thing, but seeing it is another”
The excursionists were able to see these microorganisms under a microscope in the Sanitary and Industrial Laboratory. Its employees regularly monitor drinking, natural, waste water and atmospheric air. In addition to environmental monitoring, the employees' responsibilities include monitoring the physical factors of the production environment. In total, laboratory technicians conduct tens of thousands of measurements and analyses for more than 200 indicators per year.
The excursion participants were shown the rooms where tests are carried out, told about the types of equipment and research methods.
Timur Khafizov came with his daughter Alina. The schoolgirl is in year nine and now has to choose a profession. According to her father, perhaps after getting acquainted with the work of a chemical analysis laboratory technician, she will decide to connect her life with oil refining.
“I myself work at this enterprise as a deputy head of the electrical shop. My daughter has long been interested in the specifics of my production. Explaining it in words is one thing, but seeing it is another. I am glad that I had the opportunity to come and show the technological shops and industrial laboratories. I myself was interested, I heard some things for the first time,” Timur Khafizov shared his impressions of the excursion.
“I liked everything very much. I understood how oil is processed, how waste water is purified. I am still thinking about where to go. I have two options — to go to a medical or petrochemical college,” said his daughter Alina.
Even the fathers working in neighbouring petrochemical plants were not indifferent to the tour of the enterprise.
“I work as an operator at the chemical plant. I went on the excursion for my son, it will be useful for him to see how the city’s backbone enterprise lives. And it was interesting for me too. It was really cool. I especially remember the ‘balls’ for storing gasoline, “ noted Pavel Yakovlev.
His son Daniil admitted that he was amazed by the scale of the enterprise and the cleanliness reigning in the process shops.
“I liked watching bacteria under a microscope. I did not know that microorganisms can participate in the process of wastewater treatment. I also remember the huge installations in which various chemical reactions take place,” he added.
The fascinating excursion into the world of oil refining lasted almost four hours and ended in the plant administration. At the end of the event, the participants were shown a film about the company's activities and were shown raw materials and types of products.