Samsung Engineering has won the $2.47bn contract to build Abu Dhabi Oil Refining Company’s (Takreer) carbon black and delayed coker (CBDC) unit in the UAE.

The South Korean group emerged as the frontrunner in May after submitting the lowest bid for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract.

The CBDC units, which will be located at Takreer’s refining complex in Ruwais, 240 kilometres west of Abu Dhabi city, are set to be completed by December 2015. The project has a planned capacity of 40,000 tonnes a year of carbon black and 30,000 barrels a day of crude oil.

Other companies bidding for the contract included four South Korean firms, Daewoo Engineering & Construction, GS Engineering & Construction, Hyundai Engineering & Construction and SK Engineering, and Italy’s Saipem.

Carbon black is a pure form of elemental carbon produced by the incomplete combustion of heavy petroleum products such as fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) tar, coal tar and ethylene cracking tar. Its main uses are in tyres, rubber, plastics, printing inks and coatings to colour products black and enhancing certain physical properties.

The delayed coker unit facilitates the thermal decomposition of heavier crude oil fractions to produce a mixture of lighter oils and petroleum coke.

In the fourth quarter of 2009, Samsung won a $2.73bn contract for the utilities and offsites package on Takreer’s Ruwais Refinery Expansion Project.