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Critical gas cracker unit damaged

By Our Bureau

DIBRUGARH, Sept 9 - A critical unit of the Assam Gas Cracker Project, the ethylene cracker unit (ECU) was damaged following inept handling by gas cracker engineers on Tuesday night, rendering the equipment unworkable.

The ECU is directly under the control of AK Singh, general manager of the company. Singh, it may be mentioned here, was recently selected to be the company�s (Brahmaputra Cracker and Polymer Limited) next managing director.

Technical persons of the Lummus Technologies of the United States, which provided the ECU equipment and technology, are on their way from the US to Dibrugarh to try to repair the damage to the cooling coils. They have asked that no one should touch the unit before they have a look.

The temperature of the ECU cooling coils should be reduced gradually to minus 115� at the rate of one degree per hour. But the team of technicians, led by AK Singh, attempted to reduce the temperature of the coils very rapidly, severely damaging the sensitive equipment, in the process.

It is gathered that the management of BCPL wanted to show production at the gas cracker from September 15, and this is why engineers were ordered to rush through the gas cracking processes. While the project�s construction and commissioning have suffered from gross management inefficiencies under incompetent managers and directors, the ECU damage is the latest flaw in a series of hiccups in the gas cracker project works.

Chemical engineers, who know of gas cracking, told this newspaper that a thorough and professional probe into the work mismanagement has become a necessity, so that people with no work knowledge are not allowed in the gas cracker campus any longer.

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