Process, Controls & Plant Focus on: Compressed Air 20 | Plant & Works Engineering www.pwemag.co.uk August/September 2026 Located just 30 miles west of the bustling metropolitan hub of Marseille, Petroineos’ Lavéra Refinery is the largest in the South of France, and one of the largest in Southern Europe as a whole. With the ability to process up to 210,000 barrels a day, it produces a range of finished products such as gasoline, diesels, kerosene, jet fuel, fuels oils, and bitumen. The refinery’s position on the Mediterranean Sea then allows these products to be exported by road, rail, sea, and pipeline, with networks stretching to the Côte d’Azur in the east, the Rhône valley in the north, and even as far as Switzerland and the Alps. Given the refinery’s export potential, and status as Petroineos’ only active refinery since the decommissioning of the company’s site in Grangemouth, Scotland, in 2025, its strategic importance is clear. A blow to operations For this reason, when the air blower for the site’s fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) unit failed, there was naturally cause for concern. The unit is responsible for taking heavy, low-value hydrocarbons and cracking them into more saleable derivative products such as gasoline, propylene and LPG, and is one of the highest cash-flow units in any refinery. Moreover, the air blower performs a critical role within the FCC, providing medium-pressure, high-volume combustion air for catalyst regeneration. Without the blower, coke cannot be burned off and the catalyst cannot be regenerated, meaning that the entire FCC unit must be shut down. With this, the failure of Lavéra Refinery’s FCC unit air blower, which had not faltered for 35 years, had the potential to invite financial ramifications in excess of six figures per day. Clearly, an emergency response was needed to bridge the gap and ensure the continuity of air supply to allow the FCC unit to be brought back online. A solution eight years in the making Fortunately, Petroineos had a longstanding relationship with engineered energy and temperature solutions provider Aggreko, since 2017, which they sought to leverage in this crisis. Specifically, the Aggreko Process Services (APS) team is a dedicated taskforce made up of highly credentialed chemical and mechanical engineers, specialising in resolving process-specific challenges such as this against tight turnarounds. The APS team was quickly drafted in, first entering a three-week consultation and clarification phase to understand the technical requirements of the project. From here, the APS team would be able to define the best approach and design a bespoke, turnkey compressed air solution for the FCC blower, all while drawing on experience from previous Petroineos projects. Gas and air There were many unique requirements that the APS team had to design the solution around. Namely, two flow rate scenarios needed to be accounted for in order to the adapt to the unit’s operating modes, while stable production had to be maintained despite a critical minimum flow threshold. Moreover, the entire package had to comply with strict on-site safety standards, requiring full integration with Lavéra Refinery’s automatic shutdown system. With these challenges in mind, the APS team specified a bespoke compressed air package consisting of 32 oil-free air compressors, made up of a mix of Stage V diesel and electric units. Over the course of the project, these would supply 2,000 tonnes of ISO Class 0 oil-free air every day. This was supported by a power package of two PowerMX2 multi-engine Stage V generators, and four 600kVA Stage V generators, providing a stable, continuous power supply that could keep the compressors online in any eventuality. As an added benefit, this would also help to limit carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and particulate matter emissions while optimising fuel consumption. These solutions were delivered over the course of a one-month installation phase, including logistics coordination, on-site works, and system integration. The final week of this phase was dedicated to testing and commissioning, ensuring full operational readiness and optimised performance. Over the course of the project, the APS team worked in rotating eight-hour shifts to ensure continuous monitoring of the installation, including Bespoke compressed air solution supports refinery operations When the largest refinery in Southern France experienced a critical equipment failure, Petroineos called upon Aggreko to provide a bespoke air production solution in record time, allowing the site to avoid extremely costly unplanned downtime. CASE STUDY
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