Category: Outlook & Reviews

Argus in collaboration with CRU will convene the 2024 Fertilizer Latino Americano conference at the Hilton Downtown Miami, Miami, Florida, 5-7 February 2024.

Market Insight courtesy of Argus Media

While producing ammonia with hydrogen from electrolysis remains expensive, large scale lower carbon ammonia has focused on carbon capture and storage from existing plants, so-called ‘blue’ ammonia. But exactly how green is blue?

It is common knowledge that wet CO₂ is corrosive to carbon steel and “dry” CO₂ is not corrosive to carbon steel. So typically engineers and contractors choose carbon steel for dry CO₂ conditions and stainless steels for wet CO₂ conditions. This can be seen in the CO₂ feed section of almost every older urea plant. But is it true that carbon steel is always the right choice for dry CO₂ and is dry CO₂ really dry under all circumstances?

Tampa ammonia contract prices increased dramatically during September, from $395/tonne c.fr to $575/ tonne c.fr. The main culprit was plant outages and reduced production at several plants in the region. The tight supply situation was exacerbated by a delay to the restart of Ma’aden’s 1.1 million t/a ammonia plant in Saudi Arabia.

While the world’s attention has been grabbed by the terrible situation in the Middle East, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict continues to drag on. Of particular concern in recent months has been the deal to allow export of grain from Odessa, which lapsed in July 2023, a year after it first began. The deal had allowed 33 million tonnes of grain to be exported, around 60% of it to the developing world. However, Russia had always insisted that continuing with the deal was contingent on (a) a resumption of Russian ammonia exports via Odessa and (b) removing SWIFT payment restrictions on the Rosselkhozbank agricultural bank, allowing easier export of fertilizer. Fertilizers remain exempt from sanctions on Russia, but the difficulty in securing payment, the closure of the ammonia pipeline to the Black Sea, and high maritime insurance rates for traversing the Black Sea have made exports much more difficult. And although Ukraine continues to export grain, now mostly via rail to ports like Ismail and Reni on the River Danube, Russia has done its best to disrupt this, striking ports and warehouses and laying mines in shipping lanes. Around 300,000 tonnes of grain has been destroyed, according to Ukraine, as well as up to three ships hit by mines and one possibly by a missile on November 8th. Furthermore, bottlenecks in rail transit and port capacity and the difficulty in getting ships to the ports mean that actual volumes of grain exported are considerably reduced, with only around 700,000 tonnes exported via the Danube Ports from August to the start of November.

Volatility in sulphur prices has been reduced in the past year following the large price spike and subsequent drop in the summer of 2022. This price volatility has been due to various disrupted seasonal trends from the global pandemic, uneven recovery, geopolitical shifts and demand destruction for fertilizers.

Market Intelligence Price Indications Table 1: Recent sulphur prices, major markets

As plants move towards full unit control, Jochen Geiger of Ametek Process Instruments provides an overview of how the latest sulphur plant analysers are providing greater insight into sulphur plant operations.

M. Rameshni and S. Santo of Rameshni & Associates Technology & Engineering (RATE USA) discuss some of the many solutions available to revamp sulphur plants to meet stricter environmental regulations with regard to SO2 and CO2 emissions. RATE technologies for the ultimate goal of achieving near zero SO2 emissions and World Bank requirements are also illustrated.