Category: Latin America

The centre of gravity of the phosphate industry continues to shift, with Chinese exports less important, and fresh demand coming from India and Brazil.

The first global review of phosphate rock resources since 2010 has reported that technically recoverable reserves should last for more than 300 years.

Worley has been awarded a contract to supply Chemetics’ CORESO2™ technology for a sulphuric acid plant and associated oxygen unit at the Arafura Rare Earths project, sited 135 km north of Alice Springs in Australia’s Northern Territory. A greenfield mine will extract and process neodymium and praseodymium to create ultra-strong permanent magnets for a range of applications, such as household electronics and high-performance motors for electric vehicles.

Arafura Rare Earths Ltd has awarded Worley subsidiary Chemetics Inc the contract to install Chemetics CORE-SO2™ sulphuric acid technology at its Nolans Project in the Northern Territory of Australia. The scope of the contract is to deliver the detailed engineering and supply of the sulphuric acid plant plus associated oxygen plant on a lump sum basis. The acid plant at Arafura’s Nolans Project will be designed to meet future emission performance and clean energy transition goals, utilising CORE-SO2’s high turndown capability and the potential to idle the plant while keeping the catalyst warm for extended periods of time, allowing the acid plant to operate with 95% reduced SO 2 emissions when compared to traditional double contact double absorption (DCDA) plants. High pressure steam production within the process will allow CO 2 - free electrical power to be generated. By removing the use of a diesel or natural gas start-up burner, further greenhouse gas emissions will be prevented.

BASF says that its high-pressure regenerative CO2 capture technology HiPACT ® , codeveloped by BASF and engineering partner JGC Corporation will be used by INPEX, one of Japan’s largest exploration and production companies, in its Kashiwazaki Clean Hydrogen/Ammonia Project. This is Japan’s first demonstration project for the production of blue hydrogen/ammonia from domestically produced natural gas, the consistent implementation of carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) in domestic depleted gas fields and the use of hydrogen for power generation and ammonia production. The project is funded by the Japanese governmental organization New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).

Brazil’s agricultural industry continues to expand at the same time that most of its nitrogen fertilizer industry has shut down. Meanwhile, Venezuela continues to deal with the consequences of years of underinvestment and mismanagement, and elsewhere, gas discoveries in other parts of the continent have not led to the new plant construction boom that had once been hoped for.

Yara International is to supply fossil-free fertilizers to El Parque Papas, Argentina’s largest potato grower, in 2023.

Lithium miner Ioneer Ltd has signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding with Shell Canada Energy for the supply of sulphur to Ioneer for its Rhyolite Ridge lithium-boron project in Esmeralda County, Nevada. Ionner said in a statement that “securing the supply of key reagents for ore processing is an important step along the critical pathway to developing the Rhyolite Ridge project”. Under the memorandum, Ioneer will purchase up to 500,000 t/a of high-quality sulphur from Shell, which would fulfil the estimated annual sulphur requirement for the Project.

Yara International has approved a project to partly convert its Pilbara plant near Karratha in Western Australia to green ammonia production.

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.