A ceremony was held in Tehran on Monday to strike the deal in the presence of Iranian Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zangeneh and Alireza Sadiqabadi, the NIORDC CEO, Reza Rahmani, the Iranian Minister Industry, Mine and Trade, Khodada Gharibpour, IMIDRO chairman, as well as the heads of the two refineries.

By signing this agreement, the Research Institute of Petroleum Industry (RIPI) will cooperate with IMIDRO to launch a coke production unit in the two refineries and the needle and sponge coke required by the steel industry of the country will be produced from low-sulfur fuel oil domestically.

The pilot plant of the unit will be built at RIPI, and with the signing of this memorandum, industrial-scale coke units will be contracted in the refineries afterwards.

This agreement is of great strategic value for Iran given the US sanctions imposed on import of petcoke to Iran.

There are at least four basic types of petroleum coke, namely, needle coke, honeycomb coke, sponge coke and shot coke. Different types of petroleum coke have different microstructures due to differences in operating variables and nature of feedstock. Significant differences are also to be observed in the properties of the different types of coke, particularly ash and volatile matter contents.