Category: Innovation

The need for immediate climate action and cuts in carbon emissions has never been more urgent, especially in a world where ecosystems are increasingly under threat. The production of green fertilizers offers a clear route to achieving these goals by decreasing the chemical industry’s reliance on fossil fuels. Stamicarbon’s Carmen Perez, Rolf Postma and Nikolay Ketov outline the company’s innovative and integrated approach to green fertilizer technology.

In today’s dynamic business landscape, digitalisation has become a powerful tool for companies seeking to enhance operations. By leveraging real-time plant data, organisations can create more meaningful interactions between operations teams, technical experts within the industry and the power of machine learning. David Dericotte and Linda Colby of Elessent Clean Technologies introduce the MECS® digital advisor, a web-based dashboard for plant performance assessment, troubleshooting and a supplemental mentoring tool for less experienced engineers and operators.

Sulphur Experts outline the steps required to determine optimised SRU incinerator operating conditions. Although a proper determination of the ideal SRU incinerator operating conditions for any given facility is complicated by a combination of inconsistent permitting standards and poor understanding of the role of the SRU incinerator, the payoff for incinerator optimisation is a significant decrease in natural gas usage with corresponding savings in operating costs, a decrease in CO2 emissions, and a simultaneous reduction in NOx and SO3 emissions.

Johnson Matthey's latest KATALCO™ 71-7F high temperature shift catalyst with its robust shape provides lower lifetime pressure drop.

Anton Kariagin and Stefan Gebert of Clariant discuss the benefits and commercial performance of the new low temperature shift (LTS) catalyst – ShiftMax 217 Plus. A case study demonstrates the benefits of this catalyst, providing ultra-low methanol formation resulting in increased ammonia production and/or energy savings.

Large-scale ammonia cracking technology and catalysts will enable the full potential of ammonia to be realised as industries transition towards low carbon energy. In this feature we report on the current status of ammonia cracking processes and catalysts.

As environmental SO2 emission regulations become more stringent, tail gas treating options become limited. To potentially achieve lower opex and improved plot plan, utilising a biological desulphurisation process as an alternative to a conventional amine-based TGT unit is becoming of increased interest in the oil and gas industry. At the same time, demands for increased SRU capacity and reliability favour the use of medium and high-level oxygen enrichment.

Phospholutions, Inc., a sustainable fertilizer company headquartered in the United States, recently launched its flagship technology, RhizoSorb ® , to improve phosphorus fertilizer efficiency.

Kevin De Bois of Prayon Technologies describes an innovative process for removing magnesium from phosphate rock. Increasingly, phosphoric acid producers are looking to consume low-grade phosphate rock as a feedstock due to the prohibitive costs of high-grade rock sources. This has potentially negative consequences as the presence of impurities such as magnesium can negatively affect both the phosphoric acid process and the quality of the acid produced.

Toyo Engineering Corporation (TOYO), a global leading engineering contractor, has developed g-Methanol® technology. Methanol, traditionally produced from fossil resources, is now gaining attention for synthesis using carbon dioxide and hydrogen from renewable sources. This article explores methanol synthesis technology and the challenges in utilising renewable energy sources.