Category: Technology

The ammonia industry is expected to change drastically in the coming years to meet sustainability goals and to face the problem of climate change. New low carbon ammonia plants as well as fully green facilities are expected to be commissioned to meet the target of climate neutral production. The integration of an existing ammonia facility with green hydrogen to supplement or replace the grey ammonia production with green ammonia represents a low-risk solution to meet the requirement for running clean ammonia plants and offers the most competitive green ammonia production cost in the short term. In this article Sergio Panza and Marco M. Carlucci of Casale paper present different scenarios based on energy availability at battery limits.

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?

TOYO has a long history in urea granulation technologies and has recently added two new technologies to its product line-up.

Ballestra is taking a new approach to improving nutrient use efficiency by moving methylene-urea production to the fertilizer industry. Massimo Gori and Svet Valkov of Ballestra discuss the technology and benefits of having a slow-release fertilizer that uses a product from within the fertilizer industry.

Sumit Rao of Hindustan Platinum Private Ltd describes two recent start-up issues with catalyst gauze packs at a nitric acid plant, and their remediation to allow production to continue.

Steinmüller Engineering shares its experiences of applying CFD to re-design the waste heat boiler downstream of the secondary reformer to successfully achieve the desired uniform cross flow across the tube bundle.

Honeywell UOP’s nViro Hydro process provides an alternative solution to conventional hydroprocessing waste treatment utilising a sulphur recovery unit and tail gas treating unit. Janet Ruettiger of Honeywell UOP discusses the benefits of nViro Hydro which include improved operational efficiency, creating a new revenue stream and reduced capital outlays, operating expenses and water use.

Gouda Refractories continues to upgrade its refractory solutions for the sulphur recovery industry as well as developing new superior products for installations operating at higher temperatures due to oxygen enrichment.

One of the things that produced a lot of worried news headlines over the past couple of years is whether the energy transition is likely to lead to a shortage of sulphur as we switch away from fossil fuels on a large scale. As we’ve discussed in this magazine, those fears are overblown, certainly in the medium term future. Peter Harrison of CRU tackled the issue in his sulphur markets presentation at the recent Sulphur and Sulphuric Acid conference in New Orleans, and while he did admit to some reduction in sulphur supply from oil in the 2030s and increasing into the 2040s, increased sulphur recovered from sour gas is likely to more than make up for that at least until the 2040s. But one of the things that did strike me about his presentation is the extent to which the energy transition is indeed already changing the way that the sulphur market works, and will increasingly do so over the next few years.

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.