Tag: Production

Fertilizer International presents a global round-up of current potash projects.

The International Fertiliser Society (IFS) has launched FerTechInform, a comprehensive online technical resource for fertilizer production. The new digital resource combines an information knowledge base with an interactive forum for users. IFS Secretary Steve Hallam explains how it works, who it is for, and why it came into being.

The Russian-Ukraine conflict and price volatility have affected the supply/demand dynamics of the Brazilian fertilizer market and the buying behaviour of growers. As a consequence, Brazil’s fertilizer consumption is expected to fall for the first time in eight years. Debora Simoes and Cleber Vieira of leading consultancy Agroconsult offers their key market insights.

NORAM has recently introduced a patented acid entrainment mitigation device (EMD) to deal with acid mist carryover from sulphuric acid towers.

Topsoe has made a number of changes to its board. Kim Saaby Hedegaard has been appointed as the company’s new Executive Vice President, Power-to-X. Hedegaard has served as interim Head of Power-to-X since May 2022. Before that, he held the position as Chief Operations Officer (COO). He joined Topsoe in 1999 and has since held various leadership positions within engineering, technology, and sales. Since 2017, he was responsible for Catalyst Production and Technology globally. He holds a MSc in chemical engineering from the Technical University of Denmark. He is replaced as COO by Andreas Bruun Jørgensen.

A report on CRU’s annual Sulphur + Sulphuric Acid conference, which returned to being face to face meeting at the end of October 2022.

Operating plants in extreme environments can present unique challenges. If these challenges are not anticipated and addressed in design and commissioning, the plant will not be able to start up nor meet its specification. This article examines the challenges faced in commissioning amine plants operating in three diverse environments (extreme heat, extreme cold, and offshore) and the technical and procedural solutions employed to resolve them. Mike Sheilan, Ben Spooner, Kaiyr Tekebayev, and Philip le Grange , Amine Experts.

Global demand for rare earth metals is increasing, particularly for electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy devices, potentially leading to increased use of sulphuric acid in their extraction.

Sulphur markets suffered a correction in July-August that was more of a collapse; from $500/t to less than $100/t. Though it seems to have been something of an over-correction, and prices have moved back up since then, it is one of the most extreme price swings that sulphur has ever seen, comparable to the peak and precipitous fall in 2008. Indeed, at a time when commodity prices of all kinds have seen extremely high levels of volatility, sulphur has been more volatile still than just about all of them.

Fertilizers are always political to some extent, sitting as they do at the intersection of key commodities such as oil and gas on the one hand and food on the other. Markets for major nitrogen derivatives have often been distorted by political decisions to achieve self-sufficiency in fertilizer production, such as in, e.g. China or India. But over the past couple of months ammonia has found itself particularly in the political spotlight, in the context of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which continues to shape and indeed re-shape global commodity markets.