Rising costs of fossil fuels in many markets, including coal in China and high gas costs in Europe are pushing up ammonia production costs. Can the falling cost of electrolysis make green ammonia production cost competitive in the near future?
Previously, recuperative reforming has been mostly applied for capacity increase revamps, but nowadays it is a key enabler for efficient low carbon hydrogen and syngas production. Jan-Jaap Riegman of Technip Energies, Francesco Baratto of Casale and Stefan Gebert of Clariant discuss the benefits of recuperative reforming for reducing the carbon footprint of existing assets.
Storing urea under hot and humid ambient conditions can be a chall enge. Several quality parameters of the urea product itself like moisture, temperature and particle size distribution are critical. Fluctuations of these parameters over time are also important and can lead to caking issues and complaints by clients. Off-spec product means big losses in revenue and results in a troublesome stream that has to be handled separately. Learning from each other’s experiences is vital to minimise and avoid these problems. n
Highly efficient N2 O abatement technologies, coupled with the continually rising CO2 e price/ tonne are the driving forces behind nitric acid plant operators looking for increasingly sensitive and precise measurements of the N2 O mass emission. David Inward of Sick AG discusses new state-of-the-art emission monitoring technology which provides the measurements required.
Continuing growth in energy uses indicate robust demand for methanol over the coming years, but the current slate of new projects does not look sufficient to meet it. Is methanol approaching a supply crunch?
CRU’s Nitrogen + Syngas conference convened at the Hyatt Regency Barcelona Tower in Barcelona, from March 5th-8th.
BASF says that its high-pressure regenerative CO2 capture technology HiPACT ® , codeveloped by BASF and engineering partner JGC Corporation will be used by INPEX, one of Japan’s largest exploration and production companies, in its Kashiwazaki Clean Hydrogen/Ammonia Project. This is Japan’s first demonstration project for the production of blue hydrogen/ammonia from domestically produced natural gas, the consistent implementation of carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) in domestic depleted gas fields and the use of hydrogen for power generation and ammonia production. The project is funded by the Japanese governmental organization New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).
The world’s most common syngas production method remains steam methane reforming, a process which has a substantial CO2 footprint as the necessary reaction heat is supplied by combustion of hydrocarbons. Topsoe’s eREACT™ technology allows for the first-of-its-kind electrification of the traditional SMR process. The reaction heat for eREACT™ is instead generated directly by (renewable) electricity, thereby eliminating the flue gas altogether. Having gone through scale-up from bench scale to industrially relevant pilot scale the technology is now ready for industrial application.
When revamping the steam methane reformer, a detailed analysis of the whole reformer by an experienced technology licensor with deep plant knowledge is required to achieve the best solutions. Casale presents two case studies which provide examples of what can be achieved when following this approach.
Market Insight courtesy of Argus Media