CRU Phosphates welcomes you to Istanbul!

PHOSPHATE MARKET OVERVIEW

CRU’s principal phosphate analyst, Humphrey Knight, sets the scene for the event with this personal take on the state of market:

“Global phosphate fertilizer prices largely continued to decline in early 2023 after hitting their highest nominal levels in nearly 15 years during 2022. Global demand contracted sharply last year as, despite persistently high crop prices, phosphate fertilizer affordability became highly unfavourable for consumers, causing many to reduce or defer purchases.

“This ultimately outweighed major supply disruptions to the industry, with Chinese DAP + MAP exports halving compared to a year prior, and key supplier Morocco continuing to manage output. Despite fears to the contrary, Russian suppliers were ultimately able to maintain phosphate fertilizer export volumes, helping to ease otherwise tight supply.

“In early 2023, previously wide regional pricing disparities have begun to narrow. After such a dramatic reduction in demand last year, some consumers have returned to the market to replenish drawn down inventories, pushing up some prices such as those in Brazil. However, this is not universally the case, with affordability in many regions still not at the levels which previously spurred significant increases in global demand.

“CRU expects supply to improve substantially in 2023. But it is the extent to which global consumption recovers this year that will determine price direction.”

Technical programme highlights

Case study for ScaleGuard™ technology

Rajesh Ritani & Steven Paulson, Nalco Water, and Eihab Abdel Samie, NCIC

A North African phosphate fertilizer plant suffered from serious scaling in heat exchanger tubes used in the concentration of phosphoric acid. This resulted in lost production time, plugged tubes and reduced productivity. Nalco Water performed a detailed investigation into the underlying problem and recommended the use of its ScaleGuard™ technology as a heat-exchanger and evaporator anti-scalant. An optimised dose of ScaleGuard™ in the phosphoric acid feed to the evaporators resulted in a 20 day increase in available production days annually, increasing P2 O5 production by around 24,000 t/a. Moreover, the average number of tubes plugged with hard scale changed from 70 tubes to 14 tubes. These were also easily cleaned as the scale formed was softer. The use of ScaleGuard™ anti-scalant improved workplace safety at the plant while reducing overall maintenance costs.

Success with a new Andritz tilting pan filter at IMACID in Morocco

Farooq Ellahi, Andritz AG

Andritz has developed a new model 36-250 tilting pan filter that can filter 1,050 tonnes of P2 O5 per day. This model can be adapted to all dihydrate and hemihydrate phosphoric acid processes. It can also be optimised for different phosphate rock types. The new Andritz tilting pan filter has been successfully installed and operated at IMACID, Jorf Lasfar, Morocco. The original reactor capacity at IMACID was 1,400 tonnes P2 O5 /day provided by two parallel reactors using the Prayon Mark 3 dihydrate process. A model 36-250 Andritz tilting pan filter was used to filter 750 tonnes P2 O5 /day up to a maximum filtration rate up of 950 tonnes P2 O5 /day. IMACID then upgraded their reactors to achieve 1,600 tonnes P2 O5 /day, using Andritz’s model 36-250 to filter 1,050 tonnes P2 O5 /day. This achieves a dilution of zero percent. Residual acid in the gypsum cake coming off the filter is between 0.120.14 percent, achieving a water soluble P2 O5 recovery of 99 percent.

Novel surfactants to enhance collectors for direct apatite flotation

Lucas Moore, Colonial Chemical, Inc.

This presentation focuses on a family of novel surfactants that are blended with the standard collector in relatively low concentration to enhance the grade/recovery balance during the first stage direct flotation of apatite. With the aim of maximising the amount of apatite recovered at a P2 O5 grade of 25 percent, results suggest that an enhanced collector can achieve an increase in recovery of eight percentage points.

New reagent schemes for processing US phosphate ores

Guoxin Wang and Zhengxing Gu, Arkema

The conventional Crago phosphate flotation process for beneficiating Florida phosphate ore involves conditioning the phosphate feed with a fatty acid type collector and fuel oil (or diesel) under alkaline pH conditions at a solids content above 70 percent. In a new reagent scheme recently developed by Arkema, the phosphate feed was conditioned using a combination of a fatty acid collector and a surfactant for rougher flotation. Compared with the incumbent process, the new reagent scheme achieves similar or better rougher flotation performance without pH control for conditioning. Importantly, the new reagent scheme eliminates the need for diesel or fuel oil. This makes the flotation process simpler and more sustainable/environmentally-friendly.

Ash2®Phos: closing the phosphorus cycle

Therese Åström and Michael Meyer, EasyMining

EasyMining has developed a process for the recovery of clean phosphate from sewage sludge ash (SSA). This is patented and registered under the brand Ash2Phos. This process is based on chemical treatment of sewage sludge ash from mono-incineration. P is initially recovered in the form of clean precipitated calcium phosphate (Revo-CaP). The process has been validated in several pilots that have generated products for analysis and quality testing.

EasyMining plans to produce 15,000 t/a of RevoCaP from 2025/2026 and then gradually increase production output to 150,000 t/a by 2030. RevoCaP has several potential markets: it can replace apatite in fertilizer production, be granulated and used directly as a fertilizer, or used as a feed phosphate.

Phosphogypsum – Closing the Gap?

Agnes von Garnier; Collin Bartlett & Hannes Storch, Metso Outotec

The energy transition will affect all global commodities including sulphuric acid. Today, approximately 70 percent of sulphur used in the production of sulphuric acid stems from oil and gas processing. Decreased fossil fuel use in coming decades will therefore lead to a reduction in sulphur availability. This presentation will focus on the energy transition and how it will impact sulphuric acid production technologies. Emphasis will be given to a process for decomposing phosphogypsum from existing stockpiles (or directly from operations) into sulphuric acid.

Sustainability – the trademark of Prayon’s processes

Hadrien Leruth, Prayon Technologies

How can we achieve food security if the amount of available phosphate resources is insufficient to meet demand? GetMoreP and Ecophos are two innovative processes able to upgrade secondary phosphorus sources or spent acids from the metal industry. The objective is to manufacture the high-value product DCP – a ‘superrock’ with up to 41% P2 O5 – from low-grade phosphates or phosphate beneficiation tailings. The profitability of this approach is based on the simplicity of the DCP production process and the use of ‘zero cost’ phosphate raw materials. The presentation will also discuss the management of water and the effluents at phosphoric acid plants.

Phosphate fertilizer cooling comes full circle

Igor Makarenko, Solex Thermal Science

Moving bed heat exchange (MBHE) technology is providing phosphate fertilizer producers with the ability to recover/re-use process heat and meet aggressive emissions reduction targets, while still allowing them to produce superior products. This presentation will cover two areas where MBHE technology is having the greatest impact on fertilizer operations. Firstly, the technology has a proven ability to stop dust from entering the cooling process by using a cascade aspirator. Additionally, a first-of-its kind energy recovery process is also providing phosphate producers with the ability to capture otherwise wasted process heat from the cooling stage. This can then be then used in other processes – such as pre-heating the combustion air used in fluid beds or rotary drum dryers, for example.