Edition Tag: Nitrogen Syngas 2021-11-30

Market Insight courtesy of Argus Media

With globalisation seemingly in retreat, the protectionist impulse is seeing a rise in barriers to trade, from quotas and tariffs to anti-dumping actions and domestic subsidies.

Topsoe has begun operations at a demonstration plant for the production of methanol from biogas. The aim is to validate the company’s electrified technology for cost-competitive production of sustainable methanol from biogas as well as other products. The project is supported by the EUDP Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program and is developed together with Aarhus University, Sintex A/S, Blue World Technology, Technical University of Denmark, Energinet A/S, Aalborg University, and Plan-Energi. The demonstration plant is located at Aarhus University’s research facility in Foulum, and will have an annual capacity of 7.9 t/a of CO 2 -neutral methanol from biogas and green power and is scheduled to be fully operational by the beginning of 2022. It uses Topsoe’s eSMR ™ technology, which is CO 2 -neutral when based on biogas as feedstock and green electricity for heating. It also uses half the CO 2 that makes up about 40% of biogas and typically is costly to separate and vent in production of grid quality biogas.

A move towards smaller scale feedstocks such as renewable energy and waste and biomass gasification is leading to increased focus on improving the efficiency of small-scale, modular plants.

Reducing carbon footprint in the synthesis of chemicals is a new challenge, a necessary requirement in the pursuit of sustainable products designed to minimise environmental impacts during their whole lifecycle. So-called “green” technologies for ammonia, methanol and hydrogen are being developed to meet these challenges. Casale, Linde, thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions, Toyo Engineering Corporation, Haldor Topsoe and Stamicarbon report on some of their latest developments.

A detailed rain and wastewater concept is an important part of a urea plant to meet current stringent environmental standards. Wastewater can originate from the process reaction or from outside the process equipment. In order to optimise the wastewater system of a urea plant, both the amount and type of contamination need to be known. With this knowledge, non-contaminated rainwater as well as process drains can be kept separate as much as possible to minimise the amount of wastewater to be treated, saving costs and energy. Wastewater treatment concepts from thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions and Toyo Engineering Corporation are described.

Rapidly escalating natural gas prices forced plant closures across Europe during September. Worst affected was the UK, where a fire at a cross-Channel electricity cable and low output from wind energy has, combined with low domestic storage capacity led to a surge in demand for gas for power stations and wholesale gas prices reached a record 350 pence per therm (equivalent to $46/ MMBtu) in October. On September 15th, CF Industries announced that it was halting operations at both its Billingham and Ince fertilizer plans due to high gas prices. Although ammonia prices have also risen, they have not kept pace with gas price rises, and there is a limit to what farmers could be expected to pay. CF CEO Anthony Will said: “$900 is the gas cost in a tonne of ammonia and the last trade in the ammonia market that was done was $700 a tonne”. As these plants supply most of the UK’s carbon dioxide for food and drink manufacture, the government said it would provide “limited financial support” to keep the Billingham plant operational, and that plant re-started on September 21st. Meanwhile, BASF closed its Antwerp and Ludwigshafen plants in Belgium and Germany due to what the company called “extremely challenging” economics. Fertiberia ceased production at its Palos de la Frontera site in Spain, and Puertellano remained down for scheduled maintenance. Yara shut 40% of its European ammonia production in September, and OCI partially closed its Geleen plant in the Netherlands. Achema in Lithuania decided against restarting its ammonia plant following maintenance in August, and OPZ in Ukraine shut one ammonia line at Odessa, with Ostchem and DniproAzot likely to follow. Borealis in Austria also reduced production.

Borealis has announced the appointment of Rainer Höfling as CEO of its International Fertilizer & Melamine business, as of 1st October 2018. This business unit comprises approximately 2,000 employees. The dedicated management team under the lead of Rainer Höfling will provide higher agility and increased customer focus for the business. Borealis runs fertilizer production sites in Austria, France, the Netherlands and Belgium and melamine production in Austria and Germany.

Scanfeld™ is the world’s first remote sensing solution for fully automated early-warning gas leak detection for chemical plants. Using FTIR spectroscopy, Scanfeld™ identifies hundreds of different gases in real time from kilometres away. With just a few Scanfeld™ sensor units, large production sites, tank farms, or gas loading areas can be monitored reliably. Gas leaks are quickly detected, and the formation of dangerous gas clouds is monitored, measured, and visualised. René Braun of Grandperspective discusses how the system works and how it is being applied in industry.