With the addition of Green Granulation technology (GGT), Casale is the only industry licensor able to provide customers with an entire nitrogen fertilizer complex. Ken Monstrey and Matteo Fumagalli of Casale outline the benefits of this technology and its revolutionary new elements.
Market Insight courtesy of Argus Media. Urea: Prices in general fell further in late October. Suppliers in most regions were forced to accept lower than expected net-backs due to low import demand and high producer inventories. India was the exception with IPL securing 1.7 million tonnes of urea at $400-404/t cfr under its 20th October tender.
Market Insight courtesy of Argus Media
TOYO has a long history in urea granulation technologies and has recently added two new technologies to its product line-up.
It is common knowledge that wet CO₂ is corrosive to carbon steel and “dry” CO₂ is not corrosive to carbon steel. So typically engineers and contractors choose carbon steel for dry CO₂ conditions and stainless steels for wet CO₂ conditions. This can be seen in the CO₂ feed section of almost every older urea plant. But is it true that carbon steel is always the right choice for dry CO₂ and is dry CO₂ really dry under all circumstances?
Merchant markets for ammonia have faced considerable disruption in recent years due to the covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Tampa ammonia contract prices increased dramatically during September, from $395/tonne c.fr to $575/ tonne c.fr. The main culprit was plant outages and reduced production at several plants in the region. The tight supply situation was exacerbated by a delay to the restart of Ma’aden’s 1.1 million t/a ammonia plant in Saudi Arabia.
Ballestra is taking a new approach to improving nutrient use efficiency by moving methylene-urea production to the fertilizer industry. Massimo Gori and Svet Valkov of Ballestra discuss the technology and benefits of having a slow-release fertilizer that uses a product from within the fertilizer industry.
Proman has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Mitsubishi Corp to collaborate on the development of a blue ammonia plant at Lake Charles, Louisiana. This new facility will aim to produce around 1.2 million t/a of low carbon ammonia, making it one of the largest of its kind in the world. The plant will incorporate carbon capture and sequestration technology. Proman says that this development aligns with the company’s commitment to sustainability and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The proposed ammonia plant will be located at Proman’s existing site in Lake Charles, adjacent to its gas-to-methanol plant, which is also currently being developed.
Rohit Khurana and Umesh Jainker of KBR presented a technical paper on this topic during the 2013 Asian Nitrogen + Syngas Conference. It can be found in the UreaKnowHow.com E-Library with the title: ”Replacing ammonia plant catalyst with maximum efficiency and lowest cost”. The paper addresses the importance of de-dusting catalyst beds before commissioning and the serious impacts on the plant if not performed thoroughly. Many ammonia plants have faced problems related to the plugging of exchangers, pipe choking, pressure drop increase of the downstream catalyst beds and separators or foaming in the CO 2 removal section which could be caused by the presence of catalyst dust. Most of these problems have led to either decrease in the efficiency of the plant or operation at lower throughputs. The paper presents the critical steps and procedures for proper dedusting of the catalyst beds before commissioning. In addition, the foaming problem in the CO 2 removal section associated with catalyst dust is discussed signifying the importance of cleaning the CO 2 removal system and solution. The role of filters in the CO 2 removal section was also emphasised.