Magazine: 367 Sept-Oct 2020

SensoTech has announced a high level management restructuring which represents a generational change in leadership. Robert Benecke and Hannes Benecke, sons of the founder Dr. Ingo Benecke have become the company’s new managing directors with immediate effect, replacing Dr. Ingo Benecke and SensoTech co-founder Mathias Bode, who have run the company for 30 years, developing and producing sonic velocity measuring instruments for liquid analysis which can be found in numerous industrial plants around the globe.

The ammonia market continues to be oversupplied, and prices have dropped to historically low levels. Yuzhnyy rates dropped to $175/t f.o.b. in July. In spite of shutdowns in Trinidad and elsewhere, demand remains sluggish and recovery from the Covid epidemic is patchy, especially in the US.

Spanish fertilizer producer Fertiberia is teaming up with energy firm Iberdrola to build Europe’s largest plant for generating green hydrogen for industrial use – in this case ammonia production. The 100MW solar plant and accompanying 20 MWh lithium-ion battery system and 20MW electrolytic hydrogen production system will be built at a cost of $174 million, and electrolyse water to produce 720 t/a of hydrogen. When fed into Fertiberia’s existing ammonia plant at Puertollano, 250km south of Madrid, the hydrogen will allow a 10% reduction in natural gas use by the plant, saving the company 39,000 t/a in annual CO 2 emissions. Start-up is planned for 2021. Fertiberia will also use electrolysis-generated oxygen as a raw material for nitric acid, which is used to produce ammonium nitrate at the site.

TechnipFMC’s EARTH ® technology, with its structured catalyst jointly developed by TechnipFMC and Clariant, has been proven to be a cost effective way to drastically improve productivity and energy efficiency of the steam reforming process, while reducing the CO 2 footprint per unit hydrogen and syngas product. The technology can be applied in projects to increase the capacity of ammonia and methanol plants and allows significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. S. Walspurger of Technip Benelux B.V. and S. Gebert of Clariant GmbH report on the EARTH ® technology and its applications.

It’ s not a very worthy thought, I’m afraid, but I must admit it was my first reaction on seeing the terrible pictures from Beirut on August 4th. The explosion that ripped through the centre of the historic and much troubled Mediterranean city was captured from many different smartphone cameras, and watching the expanding vapour cloud from the supersonic shockwave, and witnessing the sheer size of the explosion, it seemed immediately evident to me that it had to be a high explosive responsible, not the fireworks that could be glimpsed sparkling beforehand in the smoke from the burning warehouse. The rising cloud of orange-brown nitrogen dioxide that followed the blast was the clincher – it looked like it was ammonium nitrate yet again.

N. Temnaya and S. Suvorkin of NIIK report on the modernisation of monopressure (UKL-7) and dual pressure (AK-72) nitric acid plants in Russia and the CIS.

Troubleshooting and root cause analysis help to identify and solve problems in the operation of nitric acid plants and to prevent future reoccurrences. Johnson Matthey, Casale and Sabin Metal Corporation discuss their approach to solving problems in nitric acid plants to improve plant reliability and efficiency and to avoid unplanned shutdowns, costly replacement of equipment and loss of production.

Alistair Wallace, Head of Fertilizer Research, Argus Media, assesses price trends and the market outlook for nitrogen.

In spite of continuing safety concerns due to the Beirut explosion, and the rise of the use of urea as a nitrogen fertilizer, ammonium nitrate demand continues to increase in several key markets.

Johnson Matthey (JM) has been selected by China’s Ningxia Baofeng Energy Group as licensor for a third methanol synthesis plant at their coal to olefins complex near Yinchuan in Ningxia province. With a planned capacity of 7,200 t/d (2.4 million t/a), the unit will be the largest single train methanol plant in the world once completed.