The International Fertilizer Association (IFA) says that Svein Tore Holsether has been elected as its new chair of the Association. IFA said in its press release that the selection of Holsether, the president and CEO of Yara International, is a continuation of the industry’s commitment to sustainability.
Market Insight courtesy of Argus Media
T. Hentrich and B. Nowak of VDM Metals provide an overview of the development of VDM® Alloy 699 XA, a new generation, metal dusting resistant alloy, available in a wide range of product forms, for demanding applications in the chemical process industry.
A consortium has unveiled plans to build one of the largest green hydrogen plants in the world in a bid to make Oman a leader in renewable energy technology. The $30 billion project is being developed by Oman’s state-owned oil firm OQ, green fuels developer InterContinental Energy and Kuwait government-backed renewables investor EnerTech. Construction is scheduled to start in 2028 in Al Wusta governorate on the Arabian Sea. It will be built in stages, with the aim to be at full capacity by 2038, powered by 25 GW of wind and solar energy. Two years has already been spent on solar and wind monitoring analysis for the development. According to the consortium, the site chosen has the optimal diurnal profile of strong wind at night and reliable sun during the day, and is also located near the coast for seawater intake and electrolysis.
The heart of any urea plant is the high-pressure urea synthesis section. Properly functioning safety valves are vital to protect the high-pressure section against ruptures due to pressures that are too high in case of upset conditions. However, the very corrosive intermediate ammonium carbamate makes the reliable and proper functioning of safety valves more challenging.
Ammonia markets continue to be dominated by unplanned outages in Saudi Arabia (where the SAFCO 4 and one of the Ma’aden ammonia plants are both down, removing 2.3 million t/a of merchant ammonia from the market). This comes on top of other shutdowns earlier in the year on Trinidad, in the US and Australia.
A round-up of current and proposed projects involving non-nitrogen synthesis gas derivatives, including methanol, hydrogen, synthetic/substitute natural gas (SNG) and gas- and coal to liquids (GTL/CTL) plants.
Plans to decarbonise power production and shipping are leading to increasing interest in using ammonia as a fuel, but technical and economic barriers still remain to be overcome.
Maire Tecnimont SpA says that its subsidiaries MET Development, Stamicarbon and NextChem have collectively begun work on a renewable power-to-fertilizer plant in Kenya. MET Development has signed an agreement with Oserian Development Company for the development of the plant at the Oserian Two lakes Industrial Park, on the southern banks of Lake Naivasha, 100 km north of Nairobi.
The internals of ammonia synthesis converters are generally made of austenitic stainless steel to withstand the harsh operating conditions (high temperature, high pressure and synthesis gas containing hydrogen and ammonia). Since nitriding is the most critical material degradation for the converter internals, Casale has set up a large nitriding analysis campaign. In the last decade, samples of materials operated under different pressures and temperatures and for different time spans have been tested and analysed. The data obtained has been used to increase nitriding knowledge and to establish a correlation to predict nitriding rate to allow the most suitable material and relevant thickness to be selected. L. Redaelli and G. Deodato of Casale report on how this correlation was established and provide valuable insight on this phenomenon and how to predict and control it.