The last year has seen the first shipments of low-carbon ‘green’ fertilizers from companies such as Yara, Fertiberia, OCI and Sabic Agri-Nutrients. Partnerships with food manufacturers and retailers are helping to grow this emerging market and drive demand.
As the industry pushes towards more sustainable practices, ammonia is emerging as a promising alternative fuel for ships. Effective management of by-product NOx, NH3 and N2 O emissions from the combustion of ammonia is crucial to the success of ammonia as an alternative fuel. A new catalyst has been developed by Enercat to treat these three molecules in one bed. Jean-Rémi Stephany and Emmanuel Rohart of Enercat – Alsys Group report on this new technology which has been developed in marine ammonia combustion engine conditions.
Nutrien has announced the appointment of Mark Thompson as executive vice president and chief financial officer, effective from 26 August 2024. Thompson succeeds Pedro Farah, who will remain with Nutrien in an advisory capacity until his departure on 31 December 2024.
Green ammonia production facilities can be situated in remote areas with access to often fully off-grid renewable power supply. This article examines plant concepts and discusses the challenges and solutions for these plant architectures. Through a case study, an efficient and innovative methodology to compare options and optimise the sizing of the plant is presented. The methodology addresses the intermittency of the power production, the flexibility limits of the main process units, and the costs of investment and operation, using proprietary techno-economic dynamic simulation software, Odyssey.
Refinery sour water strippers are an often overlooked resource of low GWP ammonia. Martin A. Taylor and Charles L. Kimtantas of Bechtel Energy Technologies and Solutions, Inc. (BETS) show the results of a study on reusing an existing SWS as one of the major systems in a SWSPlus unit for the recovery of ammonia for sale. Relative cost factors will compare a complete SWSPlus unit versus reusing an existing SWS.
This troubleshooting case study describes an incident at one of the sulphur recovery units at BPCL Kochi Refinery, India. Following a maintenance turnaround of the unit in 2022, unusually high H2 S and SO2 were observed at the outlet of the Claus section. This created an additional load on the tail gas reactor, which led to frequent plugging in the quench column and frequent outages in the tail gas unit, creating environmental and reliability issues in the unit. The activities to identify the root cause of the incident are described and the measures to solve the problem are shared.
Saudi Aramco has sold another tranche of 1.54 billion shares, amounting to 0.64% of the company’s total ownership. The sale, at 27-29 riyals per share, was oversubscribed by a factor of five, making it more popular than the previous IPO, in 2019, which sold 1.5% of the company’s shares for a total of $29.4 billion. Foreign take up of shares was also higher this time, with more than half of sales to foreign investors, compared to 23% for the 2019 sale. However, it remains relatively small in scale compared to Saudi Arabia’s ambitions as part of its Vision 2030 plan to encourage more foreign direct investment and wean the country off its dependence on oil. Aramco is the world’s largest oil company in terms of both daily crude production and market cap, and remains 82% in the hands of the government and 16% held via the country’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF).
In a major milestone, Yara International has officially opened its renewable hydrogen plant at Herøya Industrial Park, Porsgrunn, Norway.
The need for immediate climate action and cuts in carbon emissions has never been more urgent, especially in a world where ecosystems are increasingly under threat. The production of green fertilizers offers a clear route to achieving these goals by decreasing the chemical industry’s reliance on fossil fuels. Stamicarbon’s Carmen Perez, Rolf Postma and Nikolay Ketov outline the company’s innovative and integrated approach to green fertilizer technology.
Sulphur is a necessary nutrient for strong and healthy plant-growth and disease resistance. Fertipaq manufactures the liquid suspension fertilizer S-600 using sulphur recovered wastewater and biogas streams. This organic product is an ideal nutrient source for crops with a high sulphur requirement.