On August 30, Novopolotsk / Diana Kurilo - BELTA /. The new vacuum unit will allow Naftan OJSC to reduce fuel oil yield by 5% per crude oil and increase the production of high-value light oil products. Its commissioning is planned for November 2011. This was announced today to journalists by the chief engineer of the enterprise, Anatoly Artyukh, BELTA correspondent reports. Naftan is purposefully moving towards reducing fuel oil production as a commercial product and increasing its use for the production of more valuable products. One of the stages in solving this problem was the construction of a vacuum unit for the Visbreaking-Thermocracking facility. The purpose of this construction is to deepen oil refining, which will allow a reduction in fuel oil yield by approximately 5% per crude oil and prepare raw materials (vacuum residue) for bitumen production and vacuum gas oil for the Unicracking facility. The payback period for the project will be three years. According to preliminary estimates, the annual profit from product sales will reach almost Br18 billion. The commissioning of the facility will allow for the extraction of an additional amount of products such as vacuum gas oil and diesel fuel components from the residues of visbreaking and thermocracking processes. This will serve to increase the depth of oil refining and allow for an increase in the production of high-value light oil products. There is also the possibility of processing straight-run fuel oil at the vacuum unit, which is produced in excess by the plant's primary processing units, especially in winter. The capacity of the unit, designed by the foreign company Koch-Glitsch, will be up to 200 tons of raw materials per hour. This will yield up to 60 tons/hour of vacuum gas oil and up to 10 tons/hour of diesel fuel. In addition, over time, the vacuum unit will become one of the raw material suppliers for the delayed coking unit. Heavy coking residue as raw material will be used for the first time at Naftan OJSC. According to Anatoly Artyukh, Russian refineries do not have similar production facilities. In Europe, similar vacuum units are operated at three enterprises, including in the Czech Republic. The Czech design organization (Unis) prepared the project for the Visbreaking-Thermocracking vacuum unit. Naftan designers integrated it into the plant's technological scheme, integrating it with the existing facility.