Author: richardhands

Repsol has approved a historic €800 million investment in Ecoplanta, a pioneering project in Europe to transform urban waste into renewable fuels and circular products, adding a solution for reducing CO2 emissions in the transport sector, while at the same time promoting the circular economy. Located in Tarragona, the facility will be the first in Europe to produce methanol from municipal waste via a gasification process developed by Enerkem - a technology company in which Repsol is a partner – using waste that would otherwise end up in landfills or be incinerated.

Toyo Engineering Corporation (TEC) will license its ACES-21 urea technology to Angolan fertilizer producer Amufert for the Soyo urea plant in Angola. The plant will have a capacity of 4,000 t/d and will be the first of its kind in the country, based on abundant local natural gas supplies. Toyo Engineering will supply licensing, basic design, certain equipment procurement and technical services, while international engineering company Wuhuan Engineering will lead the engineering, procurement and construction of the plant. Production is expected to start in 2027. KBR was previously awarded the license for the 2,300 t/d ammonia plant in November 2024 (see Nitrogen+Syngas 393, Jan/Feb 2025, p6).

thyssenkrupp nucera Management AG has appointed Klaus Ohlig as its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO), effective from July 1st, 2025. Klaus Ohlig will succeed Fulvio Federico, who has decided to not extend his contract for personal reasons. To ensure a smooth and seamless transition, Fulvio Federico will continue to support thyssenkrupp nucera on a consultancy basis for at least one year, providing strategic guidance and technical expertise to maintain continuity and stability.

• Prices look set to come under further pressure moving into March, particularly east of Suez. Prices in the West – specifically in northwest Europe – have enjoyed a partial degree of support through February, though this appears unlikely to hold for much longer.

Maire Group subsidiary MET Development, together with Eni and utility company Iren Ambiente, have started the permitting process for a renewable methanol and hydrogen plant at Eni’s refinery in Sannazzaro de’ Burgondi near Pavia. The plant will be developed using NextChem’s NX Circular™ technology, which allows the plant to convert waste by generating syngas, which is subsequently used to produce high quality sustainable fuels and chemicals. Once completed, the plant will be able to convert approximately 200,000 t/a of non-recyclable waste supplied by Iren’s waste management unit Iren Ambiente into synthesis gas. This will in turn be converted to produce up to 110,000 t/a of renewable methanol, as a potential fuel for decarbonisation of the maritime sector. It will also produce up to 1,500 t/a of hydrogen, which could be used in refinery processes, reducing CO2 emissions compared to fossil-generated hydrogen, or, alternatively, for sustainable mobility in road and rail transport. The plant will also recover 33,000 t/a of inert granulate, which can be used for the cement industry. The plant will use infrastructure and services already available at the refinery to optimise costs.

PT Pupuk Kujang, a subsidiary of state-owned fertilizer producer holding company PT Pupuk Indonesia, is conducting a trial production of green ammonia projected to replace coal in the power generation industry. In local press reports, Robert Sarjaka, Director of Operations and Production of Pupuk Kujang, said that the production of green ammonia is part of the company’s efforts to contribute to realizing the energy transition in Indonesia, namely making Pupuk Kujang the first company to produce green ammonia in the country. Pupuk Kujang receives green hydrogen from renewable power supplied by PLN Indonesia Power (PLN IP), part of state power utility PT PLN. In the first trial phase, Pupuk Kujang will process 1 t/d of green hydrogen into 5 t/d of green ammonia.

NextChem subsidiary Stamicarbon has been selected to provide the process design package to upgrade the Hulunbuir New Gold Chemical Co., Ltd.’s urea plant in Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia, using its proprietary NX STAMI UreaTM technology. The upgrade will integrate Stamicarbon’s EVOLVE MELT MP flash design to enhance operational efficiency and reliability while minimizing process steam consumption. Following the upgrade, the plant’s capacity will be increased by about 26% to 3,600 t/d, with an expected high-pressure steam reduction of 15%.

Orica says it has achieved a decarbonisation milestone by eliminating 1.0 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) from its Kooragang Island site, the equivalent of taking 600,000 cars off the road. The emissions reduction is the result of deployment of tertiary abatement technology on three nitric acid plants, in a project co-financed by the New South Wales Government’s Net Zero Industry and Innovation Program and the Federal Government’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation. The Clean Energy Regulator also approved the project as eligible to generate Australian carbon credit units.

Maire Group says that its nitrogen fertilizer technology licensor Stamicarbon has been awarded new contracts related to its NX STAMI UreaTM technology in Canada. The first award is a process design package and the licensing of an integrated urea and diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) production plant currently being developed by Genesis Fertilizers, a farmer-owned consortium, at Belle Plaine, Saskatchewan. The plant will have a urea melt capacity of 2,500 t/d, with operations expected to begin by 2029. Also thanks to a carbon capture and sequestration unit, it will be the first proposed low-carbon nitrogen fertilizer plant in Canada. Stamicarbon will apply its proprietary flash urea melt technology to enhance operational efficiency and reliability while minimising process steam consumption. The plant will also include a DEF facility with a production capacity of 1,500 t/d.

Kuwait’s state owned Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) has issued a tender for companies to bid on construction of the second phase of its gas sweetening facility at booster station BS 171 in West Kuwait. Thirty-two companies have been pre-qualified to bid for the $390 million engineering procurement and construction (EPC) contract for the project. Phase II will involve the construction of two processing trains, each with a capacity to produce 60 million scf/d of sales gas from sour gas with an H2S content of 4%. Sulphur recovery from the project will come from two separate 100 t/d trains with a total capacity of 65,000 t/a of molten sulphur.