Round up day two, CRU Nitrogen+Syngas ExpoConference

Day two of CRU’s Nitrogen+Syngas Expoconference 2026 saw the conference move into its technical sessions, run in three parallel streams covering everything from low carbon hydrogen production, sustainable plants, emissions reductions, carbon capture, ammonia plant operations, syngas and methanol production to asset safety and maintenance.

Blue ammonia

One of the things that struck me most, and a clear indicator of the way that the industry is moving, was the number of presentations devoted to the nuts and bolts of ‘blue’ ammonia production; now firmly established cost-wise as the likely way for low carbon production to go in the medium term. This begins with carbon capture strategies – Dow highlighted their high pressure regeneration process, which offers up to a 40-50% reduction in operating expenditure compared to other methods, more than offsetting the increased capex. NextChem also offers a cryogenic CO2 recovery process, suitable for higher molar proportions of CO2 in the gas feed (preferably above 15%) and can supply CO2 as a liquid rather than a gas. All of this makes meeting CO2 specifications all the more important, and Zubair Taiha of Yara discussed varying specifications and treatment strategies to remove hydrogen, oxygen, amines, ammonia, alcohols, aldehydes and solids/dust, as well as, most crucially, water, to prevent pipeline corrosion.

Saudi Aramco presented the results of a technology assessment of blue ammonia production, comparing steam reforming, autothermal reforming (ATR) and partial oxidation, concluding that ATR, though unusual for ammonia production, had the better performance for CO2 recovery at a ‘sweet spot’ of around 80% efficiency, and the proven scalability for large volumes.

Other technologies

Technip have completed validation of their ammonia cracking technology at a pilot plant at Rotterdam, and are now looking for a first commercial reference. ‘Hynext by T.EN’ uses a structured catalyst developed with Clariant for higher mass transfer rates, lower pressure drop, and more efficient heat recovery, combined with the T.EN burner. The design minimises metal exposure to high temperature ammonia to avoid nitridation issues and can use a variety of fuels for the burner, including a hydrogen purge from the purification section.

KT Tech have an innovative solution to low carbon hydrogen production. Their NX eBLue technology uses electrically heated reformer tubes (and an electric pre-heat section) to replace the traditional SMR radiant box, which reduces gas consumption by 45%, and potentially allows higher CO2 recovery efficiency at up to 98% via purge gas recycling. The heated tubes are supplied in modular assemblies which allow flexibility in design and operation. Feeds can also be flexible, with biogas potentially producing negative CO2 outputs of 9-11kg CO2/kg H2. Electrical energy consumption is only around one third of a comparable sized electrolysis-based plant.

Casale highlighted their partnership with China’s XLX (Xin Lian XIn) Group, which now includes the first world-scale ammonia-urea complex combining the N-LOOP and HYPER-U medium/high pressure self stripping technology.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, meanwhile, presented an innovative ammonia scrubbing system using a CO2 bubbling unit to boost mass transfer and replace hazardous sulphuric acid scrubbing.