Woods Cross, Utah

Woods Cross, Utah — Silver Eagle Refining Plant

Woods Cross Refinery

The Silver Eagle Refining Woods Cross plant is located in the heart of the Salt Lake Valley, a few miles north of downtown Salt Lake City.  The plant was originally built in 1954 as a Sure-Seal wax refining plant. From 1960 until 1999, the plant was owned by a series of different companies including Crysen and Inland Refining. In January of 2000, the plant was purchased by Silver Eagle Refining (SER). Silver Eagle Refining had supplied IGI with waxy feedstocks for several years. Then, in June of 2011, the Silver Eagle Group was acquired by The International Group (IGI), which allowed IGI to secure a constant, stable future supply of wax material. 

The primary processing units at the Woods Cross refinery are an atmospheric crude distillation unit, a vacuum distillation unit, and a Mobil Distillate De-waxing (MDDW) Unit. The Woods Cross Silver Eagle refinery currently processes yellow wax crude exclusively, which is charged to the Atmospheric Distillation Unit. The Atmospheric Crude Unit uses heat to take advantage of differing boiling points of materials in the crude oil to make desirable refined products. The yellow wax crude processed in Woods Cross is a unique, crude with a high wax content, very low sulfur content, and very low acid content. The products from the crude distillation tower include heavy naphtha, diesel, atmospheric gas oil, and atmospheric tower bottoms. The heavy naphtha is stored and shipped to the Silver Eagle Evanston refinery for use in the production of gasoline. Due to the low sulfur content of the yellow wax crude, the stove can be sold directly to the market as Ultra-Low-Sulfur-Diesel (ULSD).  Both the diesel and the atmospheric gas oil have poor cold flow properties and need to be de-waxed in the MDDW unit.

The atmospheric bottoms, the heaviest part of the crude, are charged to the Vacuum Distillation Unit.  In the Vacuum Distillation tower, the product streams are Vacuum Unit Overhead, Light Vacuum Gas Oil (LVGO), Heavy Vacuum Gas Oil (HVGO), and Vacuum Tower Bottoms (VTB).  The vacuum Unit Overhead and the LVGO streams are sent to the MDDW Unit for de-waxing. Both the HVGO and the VTB undergo additional wax processing off-site. The Mobil Distillate De-waxing Unit uses a catalytic de-waxing process to convert waxy diesel and gas oil to gasoline blendstock and ULSD.