Brazil’s agricultural industry continues to expand at the same time that most of its nitrogen fertilizer industry has shut down. Meanwhile, Venezuela continues to deal with the consequences of years of underinvestment and mismanagement, and elsewhere, gas discoveries in other parts of the continent have not led to the new plant construction boom that had once been hoped for.
BASF has announced some changes to its leadership team. The company has appointed Dr. Stephan Kothrade , President, Intermediates, as a member of the board of executive directors from March 1st, 2023. Stephan Kothrade has been with BASF since 1995 and has led BASF’s Intermediates division since 2022. Dr. Kurt Bock, Chairman of the Supervisory Board said: “Stephan Kothrade has proven himself in several leadership roles in Germany and abroad. He has worked successfully for many years at our Verbund sites in Europe and Asia and will complement the Board of Executive Directors in an excellent way.” Kothrade succeeds Saori Dubourg , who left the company as from February 28, 2023, by mutual agreement. The board thanked Dubourg for her successful work and wished her all the best for her future career.
ExxonMobil has awarded the contract for front-end engineering and design (FEED) of what it describes as the world’s largest low-carbon hydrogen production facility. A final investment decision for the project is expected by 2024, subject to stakeholder support, regulatory permitting, and market conditions. Technip Energies will conduct the FEED for the Baytown integrated complex, which will produce up to 1 bcf/d of low carbon hydrogen, while capturing more than 98% of associated CO2 emissions, totalling around 7 million tCO2 e/year. Offtake agreements are reportedly under discussion with third party customers. Start-up is planned for 2027-2028. The carbon capture and storage network being developed for the project will also be made available for use by third-party CO2 emitters in the area in support of their decarbonisation efforts.
The market is anticipated to correct lower throughout the rest of the first quarter. Once a clearer picture over seasonal fertilizer demand in Europe emerges, this could stabilise downward momentum.
Fulcrum BioEnergy says that it has successfully produced low-carbon synthetic crude oil using landfill waste as a feedstock at its Sierra BioFuels Plant, the world’s first commercial-scale landfill waste-to-fuels plant. Located outside of Reno, Nevada, Sierra will produce approximately 11 million gallons of renewable, low-carbon transportation fuels each year from approximately 175,000 t/a of landfill waste.
Air Liquide presents the results of an internal study to identify preferred natural gas-based plant configurations at a methanol capacity of 250 t/d. Delivering small capacity plants requires a focus on the total cost of ownership (TCO) for the economics to be successful, in addition to the CO 2 footprint of the operation. As found by this study, SMR concepts are naturally power balanced for standalone greenfield operations and show no particular advantage for power import in a brownfield setting. POX and ATR cases are greatly improved and even advantaged in a brownfield setting compared to SMR when shifting from power balance to power import cases.
Advanced Methanol Amsterdam (AMA) is a production facility, that will be realised in the Port of Amsterdam's Biopark, which is destined to produce advanced methanol that meets the European renewable energy directive (RED) requirements. Once completed, AMA will be the flagship production site for GIDynamics and GIDARA Energy and for its High Temperature Winkler (HTW ® ) gasification technology. AMA will also be the first of its kind green methanol unit designed by Casale.
The ammonia market appears to be oversupplied as of the end of October 2022, with a ready availability of spot cargoes. Coupled with increased availability from European producers due to an easing of gas prices, this seemed to indicate bearish market sentiment for the immediate future.
Casale has developed a range of methanol-ammonia coproduction processes to match different requirements according to product capacity.
Industry focus on technologies to reduce the carbon intensity of ammonia and methanol production has been intensifying. In this article thyssenkrupp Uhde, Proton Ventures, Toyo Engineering Corporation, Stamicarbon, BD Energy Systems and KBR report on some of their latest technology developments towards decarbonisation.