Refinery sour water strippers are an often overlooked resource of low GWP ammonia. Martin A. Taylor and Charles L. Kimtantas of Bechtel Energy Technologies and Solutions, Inc. (BETS) show the results of a study on reusing an existing SWS as one of the major systems in a SWSPlus unit for the recovery of ammonia for sale. Relative cost factors will compare a complete SWSPlus unit versus reusing an existing SWS.
As more focus extends to a circular economy, there are industry wide discussions on whether future global sulphur demand will be challenged by the energy transition and decarbonisation. Hannes Storch, Collin Bartlett and Marcus Runkel of Metso discuss how the recycling of pyrite tailings could address some of these issues.
One of the biggest areas for new sulphuric acid demand in the past few years has been in nickel processing plants, particularly in Indonesia. A decade ago, incoming president Joko Widodo took a strategic decision that the country needed to try and capture more of the value chain from its mining and mineral industry, which was focused at the time on exports of aluminium, copper and nickel ores and concentrates, mainly to China. Over the past 10 years, the export of raw ores has been progressively restricted and companies instead compelled to build downstream processing plants for the metals. With China the main recipient of Indonesian ores, much of the investment in metals processing in Indonesia has been via Chinese companies.
Muntajat announced its QSP for September at $125/t f.o.b., an increase of $19/t from its August price. This was following its tender earlier this week, which market sources indicated to have achieved at or around $130s/t f.o.b. Over the past two weeks, KPC in Kuwait closed two sales tenders, with both indicated awarded in the high $120s/t f.o.b. Middle East spot f.o.b. prices are at their highest level since March 2023 and have climbed 58% over the past two months.
SGS Sulphur Experts has appointed Patrick Beck as the new CEO. Beck brings over two decades of leadership experience in the oil and gas industry and what Sulphur Experts describe as “a wealth of strategic insight and operational excellence to the team, steering the company towards continued innovation and engineering excellence.”
Transporting sulphur as a dry bulk solid can lead to it breaking into small particles which create dust. Over the years, various forming processes have been developed to try and minimise dust formation and produce the strongest, most resilient formed sulphur particles.
In this case study, CS Combustion Solutions presents a comprehensive strategy for the capacity enhancement and optimisation of a sulphuric acid plant that was facing several operational challenges.
This troubleshooting case study describes an incident at one of the sulphur recovery units at BPCL Kochi Refinery, India. Following a maintenance turnaround of the unit in 2022, unusually high H2 S and SO2 were observed at the outlet of the Claus section. This created an additional load on the tail gas reactor, which led to frequent plugging in the quench column and frequent outages in the tail gas unit, creating environmental and reliability issues in the unit. The activities to identify the root cause of the incident are described and the measures to solve the problem are shared.
Veolia says that its subsidiary Veolia North America has signed an agreement for the divestment of Veolia North America Regeneration Services, which includes its sulphuric acid and hydrofluoric acid regeneration activities for refineries, to private equity firm American Industrial Partners for $620 million. These activities represented revenues of around $350 million in 2023. The financial closure of the transaction is expected soon. Veolia’s Sulphuric Acid Regeneration Business includes its sulphuric acid and potassium hydroxide regeneration, as well as sulphur gas recovery, and sulphur-based products production businesses.
China’s acid production continues to grow as new smelters come on-stream. But high domestic demand from phosphate production as export restrictions are lifted and a shortage of copper concentrate may limit the potential for acid exports.