Ammonia prices have now dropped by about 50% from their highs a year ago. Gas prices have fallen, particularly in Europe, and peak fertilizer application season is over in Europe and North America, leading to slackening demand., leading to slackening demand.
Prior to the covid pandemic, sub-Saharan Africa had been the fastest growing market for new fertilizer demand. However, the combination of pandemic related disruption, followed by the dislocations caused by the war in Ukraine, have pushed up prices and led to falling demand across the continent.
Venkat Pattabathula , a member of the AIChE Ammonia Safety Committee, reports on the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ Safety in Ammonia Plants and Related Facilities Symposium, held in Munich, Germany, from 20-24 August 2023.
With the growing global demand for food and the rise in ecological challenges, there’s a pressing need for a more sustainable and environmentally-friendly approach to fertilizer production. Achieving a sustainable increase in plant load and operational margins through improved operations is a demanding task. Luc Dieltjens and Ali El Sibai of Stamicarbon discuss how a plant can effectively address these challenges with digital tools to optimise the process.
Large-scale ammonia cracking for conversion of ammonia to hydrogen is a proven technology with decades of industrial experience. Topsoe shares its experience within ammonia cracking and presents an improved and highly energy-efficient (96%) ammonia cracking technology, H2Retake™ , developed based on Topsoe’s proven technology and industrial experience.
The International Methanol Technology Operators Forum (IMTOF) met at the Leonardo Royal St Paul’s hotel in London from June 11th-14th.
A new book by leading industry expert Kish Shah looks at all aspects of ammonium nitrate production.
Hydrocarbon-based production of ammonia carries an unavoidable carbon footprint. But one of the best methods for mitigating that footprint is already here: ultra-low carbon-intensity ammonia production, also known as “blue” ammonia. With blue ammonia production, a typical ammonia plant can sequester or repurpose game-changing volumes of carbon dioxide that would otherwise end up in the atmosphere. To help foster an optimal understanding of the benefits, Ameet Kakoti and Per Juul Dahl of Topsoe A/S provide an overview of the technologies that can help any ammonia operation achieve and maintain sustainable operations – sooner rather than later.
While demand for ammonia remains – for now at least – strongly tied to fertilizer and farming, over the three decades that I’ve edited this publication, methanol’s story has been a very different one, with a succession of major new slices of demand coming every few years from new applications that flare up and then mature or even drop away again. For a while in the 1990s it was MTBE, the oxygenated fuel additive that had a brief flourish in the US before being shut down by leaking fuel tanks leaching into ground water. Then there was dimethyl ether (DME) as a blendstock for LPG, and methanol itself directly blended into gasoline in China to keep up with soaring vehicle fuel demand. More recently, methanol to olefins (MTO) has added almost another 25% of demand over and above existing chemical and fuel uses. But as the world cracks down on coal production and use, China’s attempt to use methanol as a way of using domestic coal to replace imported oil seems to have passed its high water mark and begun to recede.
Paz Muñoz and Carmen Perez of Stamicarbon discuss the strategic selection of future-proof technology for nitric acid plants. To produce nitric acid in a feasible and sustainable way, manufacturers must carefully choose the right technology and consider the capex and opex involved in the production process to ensure long-term profitability.