Category: Outlook & Reviews

Nitrogen+Syngas’s annual listing of new ammonia, urea, nitric acid and ammonium nitrate plants.

Market Insight courtesy of Argus Media

Gasification technology offers the promise of being able to convert the increasing volumes of municipal waste generated by society into useful chemical products. In spite of a patchy commercial record, interest in the process remains high.

By using a Rectisol™ demonstration unit at one of Air Liquide’s industrial production sites, Air Liquide Engineering & Construction has gained unique know-how in Rectisol™ column design with structured packings. S. Schmidt, R. Szabo, M. Linicus and S. Corbet report on how the application of commercially available structured packings in the absorber columns of a Rectisol™ unit results in significant capex and opex savings.

Gas availability and pricing continues to affect ammonia and methanol output from Trinidad, while Venezuela struggles with sanctions and political instability.

Although the urea market has weathered the pandemic relatively well, a significant amount of new capacity is due to come on-stream in the next year or so, and could keep prices depressed unless more Chinese capacity closes.

Judging by the pages of the project announcements in our news section, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the ammonia and methanol industries were all running off hydrogen generated from electrolysis, and that we had already entered an era of ‘clean’ chemical generation which did not require fossil fuels as a feedstock. Of course, while companies can naturally be forgiven for wanting to put the best public face on their green credentials, it does obscure the fact that for the moment 99% of syngas generation comes from natural gas, coal, and some coke or naphtha.

Meena Chauhan, Head of Sulphur and Sulphuric Acid Research, Argus Media, assesses price trends and the market outlook for sulphur.

While the covid pandemic has kept refinery run rates down in 2020, new refinery sulphur capacity will nevertheless form the bulk of new additions to sulphur production over the next few years. But delays to projects on both the supply and demand sides could tip a fairly balanced market in either direction.

Sulphur’s annual survey of recent, current and future sulphur recovery unit construction projects maps the developing shape of brimstone production from fuel and gas processing plants worldwide.