Tag: Production

The Sulphur Institute (TSI) held its World Sulphur Symposium in Edinburgh from April 25th to 27th.

BASF is challenging traditional catalyst shapes and performance relationships by introducing a radically new shaping concept resulting in materials with step change properties and performance. This innovative concept using 3D-printing technology is applicable to a wide range of reactions in the chemical industry and BASF is using sulphuric acid catalysts as the pilot to pioneer new ground.

Liquid fuels will be with us for decades to come, but refiners will be pushed to decarbonise their activities, via greater use of biofuels, and green/blue hydrogen use.

Potash production improvements are being made in areas such as ore extraction, cooling and froth flotation. We review technological developments from Sandvik, Eriez, Nouryon and Solex Thermal Science.

China has been the major market for base metals, including copper, nickel, lead and zinc over the past two decades as the country rapidly industrialised. But with China’s growth slowing due to demographics and market saturation, where are metals markets and production of/demand for sulphuric acid likely to go next?

Rising costs of fossil fuels in many markets, including coal in China and high gas costs in Europe are pushing up ammonia production costs. Can the falling cost of electrolysis make green ammonia production cost competitive in the near future?

Highly efficient N2 O abatement technologies, coupled with the continually rising CO2 e price/ tonne are the driving forces behind nitric acid plant operators looking for increasingly sensitive and precise measurements of the N2 O mass emission. David Inward of Sick AG discusses new state-of-the-art emission monitoring technology which provides the measurements required.

Continuing growth in energy uses indicate robust demand for methanol over the coming years, but the current slate of new projects does not look sufficient to meet it. Is methanol approaching a supply crunch?

BASF says that its high-pressure regenerative CO2 capture technology HiPACT ® , codeveloped by BASF and engineering partner JGC Corporation will be used by INPEX, one of Japan’s largest exploration and production companies, in its Kashiwazaki Clean Hydrogen/Ammonia Project. This is Japan’s first demonstration project for the production of blue hydrogen/ammonia from domestically produced natural gas, the consistent implementation of carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) in domestic depleted gas fields and the use of hydrogen for power generation and ammonia production. The project is funded by the Japanese governmental organization New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).

The world’s most common syngas production method remains steam methane reforming, a process which has a substantial CO2 footprint as the necessary reaction heat is supplied by combustion of hydrocarbons. Topsoe’s eREACT™ technology allows for the first-of-its-kind electrification of the traditional SMR process. The reaction heat for eREACT™ is instead generated directly by (renewable) electricity, thereby eliminating the flue gas altogether. Having gone through scale-up from bench scale to industrially relevant pilot scale the technology is now ready for industrial application.