Tag: Nitric Acid

Rapidly escalating natural gas prices forced plant closures across Europe during September. Worst affected was the UK, where a fire at a cross-Channel electricity cable and low output from wind energy has, combined with low domestic storage capacity led to a surge in demand for gas for power stations and wholesale gas prices reached a record 350 pence per therm (equivalent to $46/ MMBtu) in October. On September 15th, CF Industries announced that it was halting operations at both its Billingham and Ince fertilizer plans due to high gas prices. Although ammonia prices have also risen, they have not kept pace with gas price rises, and there is a limit to what farmers could be expected to pay. CF CEO Anthony Will said: “$900 is the gas cost in a tonne of ammonia and the last trade in the ammonia market that was done was $700 a tonne”. As these plants supply most of the UK’s carbon dioxide for food and drink manufacture, the government said it would provide “limited financial support” to keep the Billingham plant operational, and that plant re-started on September 21st. Meanwhile, BASF closed its Antwerp and Ludwigshafen plants in Belgium and Germany due to what the company called “extremely challenging” economics. Fertiberia ceased production at its Palos de la Frontera site in Spain, and Puertellano remained down for scheduled maintenance. Yara shut 40% of its European ammonia production in September, and OCI partially closed its Geleen plant in the Netherlands. Achema in Lithuania decided against restarting its ammonia plant following maintenance in August, and OPZ in Ukraine shut one ammonia line at Odessa, with Ostchem and DniproAzot likely to follow. Borealis in Austria also reduced production.

By utilising state-of-the-art technologies, nitric acid and ammonium nitrate producers are able to reduce the environmental impact of their production plants and make a key contribution to climate protection.

OCI subsidiary Fertiglobe says that it has partnered with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), to enable the sale by ADNOC of the first cargo of blue ammonia to Itochu in Japan, for use in fertilizer production. Fertiglobe, a 58% − 42% partnership between OCI and ADNOC respectively, will produce the blue ammonia at its Fertil plant at Ruwais in Abu Dhabi for delivery to ADNOC’s customers in Japan. This represent the first production milestone of a planned scale-up of blue ammonia production capabilities in Abu Dhabi, which is expected to include a low-cost debottlenecking program at Fertil. In addition, it was announced in June that Fertiglobe will join ADNOC and sovereign wealth fund ADQ as a partner in a new world-scale 1.0 million t/a blue ammonia project at Ta’Ziz in Ruwais, subject to regulatory approvals. The design contract for this project has been awarded, with a final investment decision expected in 2022 and start-up targeted for 2025. A feasibility study was also agreed in July betweenh the state-owned Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp. (Jogmec), Inpex and JERA as well as ADNOC to explore the possibility of producing 1.0 million t/a of blue ammonia in Abu Dhabi and transporting it to Japan.

Maire Tecnimont SpA says that its subsidiaries MET Development, Stamicarbon and NextChem have collectively begun work on a renewable power-to-fertilizer plant in Kenya. MET Development has signed an agreement with Oserian Development Company for the development of the plant at the Oserian Two lakes Industrial Park, on the southern banks of Lake Naivasha, 100 km north of Nairobi.

In August 2020 the tragic explosion of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in the port of Beirut caused many fatalities and injuries. This was a wake-up call for the entire industry to review the design of plants and storage facilities, as well as the procedures for plant operation and the handling of products. The key factor for safe new installations is the process design: the right choice of unit operations, operating temperatures and pressures, the control of process variables and the design of key items of equipment. A modern ammonium nitrate (AN) plant design not only mitigates the environmental impact, but also reduces investment costs and contributes to the key factors mentioned. M. Pieper and P. Kamermann of thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions discuss how, by using the right design, safety in ammonium nitrate plants can be easily achieved, while maintaining outstanding product quality.

Nitrogen+Syngas’s annual listing of new ammonia, urea, nitric acid and ammonium nitrate plants.

The Chemical & Process Technologies business unit of thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions is celebrating a milestone in 2021. It is one hundred years since engineer and entrepreneur Friedrich Uhde founded his own plant engineering company in a barn at his parents-in-law’s farm in Dortmund-Bövinghausen on April 6th, 1921. Now, in this centenary year, the origins of the firm are to become visible in its name again: thyssenkrupp is changing the business unit’s name to thyssenkrupp Uhde.

The year 2020 will be remembered as an uncertain, demanding and challenging year. When faced with a global pandemic, companies have adopted new approaches and remote inspection, monitoring and training using the latest digital tools has been key for the successful completion of projects. Stamicarbon, Casale and KBR share some of their experiences of the past year.

Malte Plewa, Volker Schmidt, Daniel Ávila and Enrico Rubertus of German development agency GIZ and Dr. Silke Karcher of the German Environment Ministry (BMU) discuss action on climate change from nitric acid production and the Nitric Acid Climate Action Group (NACAG) and its global initiative for mitigating emissions.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have announced the ‘Next Gen Fertilizer Challenge’, a joint EPA-USDA partnership and competition to advance agricultural sustainability in the United States. The competition includes two challenges that seek proposals for new and existing fertilizer technologies to maintain or improve crop yields while reducing the impacts of fertilizers on the environment.