Marcus Hook

Marcus Hook, PA - A plant to separate, liquefy, and store ethane and propane from shale gas originating in western PA

Sunoco Marcus Hook

SXL Mariner East Project - Propane and Ethane Separation and Storage

What does this facility do?

This is a facility near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that separates ethane and propane from an incoming pipeline (from Marcellus Shale gas in Western PA). The system uses a cryogenic separation process and stores both the ethane and propane as refrigerated liquids at low pressure.

There are large insulated storage tanks for each product. Each tank has boil-off gas handling. All refrigerated gases constantly boil off due to heat leakage into the storage tank. This gas must be handled appropriately. One method is to compress the gas and push it into a pipeline to consumers. Another is to re-refrigerate it (cool it back down) and pump it back into the tank.

My role in this project

I briefly worked on this project helping out with loop checking (check the instrument, display of the instrument on the operator interface, alarms, shutdowns, etc). I also commissioned the CCTV system.

Overall this was my shortest project with CB&I as I quickly left to move on to newer and more challenging endeavors.