ON the Eastern shore of the Halifax Harbor, about 2.5 miles south of Dartmouth, N.S., is located the latest and most modern refinery of Imperial Oil Limited. The excellent shipping facilities offered by the Halifax Harbor, together with the great scarcity of ocean tonnage, led the Executives of our Company in the summer of 1916 to locate a plant for the transhipment of Mexican crude oil from tank steamers to tank cars for delivery to the Company's Montreal refinery. This plant consisted of two 115 ft. diameter by 35 ft. high, all-steel tanks, a filling rack to accommodate forty of the largest tankers in our service, and a dock capable of docking bulk-oil boats. The property on which this plant was built consisted of two farms, totalling 179 acres, only a part of each of which was cleared. The ground was very hilly with quite abrupt slopes and after a few months' work with steam-shovel and bush gangs it was prepared for the equipment enumerated. In January, 1917, the plant was completed and immediately after, two cargoes of crude oil were received in the S.S. “Sarnolite” and S.S. “Somerset” which were then shipped to Montreal refinery in solid trains of twenty tank cars each.
Late in the Fall of 1916, the manufacturing possibilities of the site on the Halifax Harbor engaged the attention of the Company’s Executives and it was decided to erect a refinery there. The plant is laid out for an eventual capacity of 10,000 barrels per day, although the present requirement is less than this amount. Despite the many delays, incident to the adverse conditions of the material market and transportation, the refinery was placed in commission on February 18th, 1918, and has been running continuously since that date, with the exception of the pressure stills, which will increase the gasoline yield from the crude. The plant has a present capacity of 2,200 barrels of crude per day, consisting of 500 barrels of Crichton crude, and 1,700 barrels of Mexican crude. It consists of ten tower crude stills of 1,100 barrels each charging capacity. In these stills is carried on the first distillation of the crudes, and they are of the latest and most modern types, and are equipped with fractionating towers and radiators.
Plant Equipment
The finishing or steam stills, of which there are now two, are 15 ft. in diameter and 57 ft. long over all, and are equipped with towers, condensers, upper pans, vapor-heat exchangers and oil heat exchangers.
The treating plant, of which there are two distinct parts, consists of an apparatus for treating naphtha continuously, and also of the regular type of agitator of suitable capacity, complete with acid and lye apparatus and the necessary pumping equipment.
The pressure-still plant will consist of twenty-two eight ft. by thirty ft. shell stills, some of which will be equipped with false bottoms and some with sweeps, but all of which can be operated at 75 lbs. gauge or higher. They are being erected in batteries of twelve.
In addition to the distilling and treating apparatus, there is an acid plant of from five to ten tons per day capacity, which is used to recover the spent acid after it has been used for treating purposes.
The steam power plant consists of four units of water tube boilers, having a nominal rating of 100 boiler horsepower each, and is the first installation of this type of boiler that we have in our refineries.
As far as possible the pumping throughout the refinery is done by electrical power, and the electrical power plant installation consists of three 100 K.W. three-phase, 110 volt, 25 cycle alternators, belted to three 110 H.P. single cylinder De La Vergne Diesel-type oil engines.