Category: Oceania

Ammonia production at Billingham in Teesside looks set to end, bringing to a close a history of production that dates back almost a century.

Adani Enterprises says that its new greenfield copper smelter at Mundra in Gujarat, being developed by its subsidiary Kutch Copper Ltd, will begin operations in March 2024. The $1.1 billion project will have an annual production capacity of 1 million t/a of copper once the second phase is complete, but the March 24 start-up will be for the first, 500,000 t/a phase. The plant will also produce 25 t/a of gold, 250 t/a of silver, and 1.5 million t/a of sulphuric acid and 250,000 t/a of phosphoric acid as by-products. India currently imports roughly two million t/a of sulphuric acid since the closure of the Vedanta smelter in Tamil Nadu.

Metso is launching an advanced sustainable battery black mass recycling process as part of its battery minerals technology offering, which covers concentration and hydrometallurgical processing as well as related services. Demand for battery minerals is increasing sharply with the ongoing transition to clean energy sources. An electric car battery weighs approximately 200 kg. Recycling of black mass from batteries with Metso’s process can reduce up to 60% of embedded carbon compared to use of virgin materials and enables the treatment of mechanically separated and shredded batteries for recovering battery raw materials like nickel, cobalt, and lithium, as well as manganese and copper.

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.

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

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).

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.

Fulcrum BioEnergy says that it has successfully produced low-carbon synthetic crude oil using landfill waste as a feedstock at its Sierra BioFuels Plant, the world’s first commercial-scale landfill waste-to-fuels plant. Located outside of Reno, Nevada, Sierra will produce approximately 11 million gallons of renewable, low-carbon transportation fuels each year from approximately 175,000 t/a of landfill waste.

Almalyk Mining and Metallurgical Company (AMMC) has awarded Metso Outotec a euro 70 million order for the delivery of two sulphuric acid plants to be built for AMMC’s zinc roasting facility in Almalyk, Uzbekistan. Metso Outotec’s scope of delivery includes the design and delivery of Planet Positive equipment for two gas cleaning and sulphuric acid plants, which will process all off-gases from the zinc roasters into industrial-grade sulphuric acid. In addition, Metso Outotec will deliver utility facilities, such as a common cooling tower system and a common air compressor system.

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