Magazine: Nitrogen+Syngas

At the Nitrogen+Syngas Conference 2020, held in The Hague, Netherlands, Haldor Topsoe launched its new TITAN ™ series of steam reforming catalysts. The company says that the new series, which consists of the RC-67 TITAN and RK-500 TITAN catalysts, offers improved performance and longer catalyst lifetime thanks to the hibonite-rich composition. The addition of titanium promoters adds exceptional mechanical strength while a seven-hole cylindrical shape yields both a very low pressure drop and a high surface area. Pressure drop build-ups in syngas plants can cause unscheduled downtime and cost millions of dollars, while thermal instability during operation can lead to operational risk and reduce plant lifetime. Topsoe says that the catalysts can mitigate these risks, ensuring lower operating costs, increased profit margins, and reduced energy usage.

Schoeller-Bleckmann Nitec (SBN), an experienced manufacturer of high pressure equipment for ammonia and urea plants for many years, also helps customers when things go wrong. SBN has come to the aid of operators on numerous occasions, helping them return their plant to operation as soon as possible when a problem occurs. R. Bunzl discusses SBN’s approach to finding solutions to a number of exceptional problems in urea equipment.

This year’s Nitrogen + Syngas conference was held from 17-19 February in The Hague, Netherlands.

A complete listing of all articles and news items that appeared in Nitrogen+Syngas magazine during 2019.

The increased severity of operating conditions in modern steam methane reformers requires catalysts with high catalyst activity and good mechanical stability to avoid premature replacements or unplanned shutdowns. F. Morales Cano, M. Stenseng and M. Feddersen of Haldor Topsoe describe a new catalyst formulation with a very homogenous and stable carrier material delivering the high activity and high mechanical strength required for long time operation.

At the time of writing this editorial, the World Economic Forum was having its usual annual meeting in the Swiss resort of Davos. Prior to this year’s meeting, as usual the WEF had produced its annual Global Risks Report to serve as a talking point for the meeting. While some of the risks were as usual political and economic, from proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the “retreat from multilateralism” to growing inequalities of wealth in the developed world and “domestic political polarisation”, for the first time in the organisation’s history, the top five global risks in the report ranked by likeliness – which looks at potential global pitfalls over the next 10 years – were environmental. Perhaps with the pictures of Australia’s bush fire season fresh in their minds, the 750 experts ranked extreme weather events as the most likely, but climate change, biodiversity loss and sustainability in agriculture all ranked highly.

Haldor Topsoe and Sasol have announced that they have entered into a collaboration agreement to jointly license their GTL technologies. For many years, the two companies have worked together on numerous GTL projects and technologies, and Topsoe’s Syn-COR™ syngas generation technology and Sasol’s Fischer-Tropsch technologies have been licensed for several world-scale GTL ventures. Under the new collaboration agreement, the companies will continue to offer these core technologies, but will now also provide Topsoe’s hydroprocessing and hydrogen technologies. This gives potential customers access to a single-point licensing offering that covers the entire value chain from gas feed to liquid fuels. As single-point licensors, Sasol and Topsoe will offer customers all necessary technology licenses for a complete GTL solution and in addition provide basic engineering, catalysts, and hardware.

Floor prices in nitrogen markets are set by marginal producers high on the cost curve, usually using higher cost feedstocks. Recently, lower coal prices in China and the cost of imported LNG have begun to change the dynamic between producers on the margins.

‘Green’ methanol means many things to different people. It encompasses low carbon emissions methanol manufacture at scale, recovery of material through waste gasification and conversion to methanol and power to liquid (e-fuel) methanol via electrochemistry and sometimes a combination of all of the above. Each route has a place in reducing the overall carbon footprint of production and subsequent use of methanol, driven by both governmental incentives or societal demand. In this article Andrew Fenwick of Johnson Matthey reviews the various routes to manufacture.

Dr MP Sukumaran Nair, former Secretary to the Chief Minister and Chairman of the Public Sector Restructuring and Audit Board for the Government of Kerala, provides an update on India’s plans to achieve self-sufficiency in urea production by 2022.