Magazine: Sulphur

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the consequent sanctions imposed by European and North American countries, and fears over further sanctions and a widening of the conflict have had sent a systemic shock through the world trading system. Stock markets dropped sharply, and the Russian rouble lost 30% of its value. The most immediate short and medium term impact is likely to come from Russian banks being cut off from the SWIFT international payment system, making exports of commodities more difficult, although no direct restrictions or embargos have been imposed on Russian products as of time of writing.

Haldor Topsoe has appointed Elena Scaltritti as the company’s new chief commercial officer. She will take up her new position no later than July 1st, 2022. She has previously been executive vice president at Korea’s SONGWON Industrial Group, where she was responsible for the group’s commercial activities.

A sulphuric acid plant forms critical material and energy interfaces with other plants in several different types of chemical and metallurgical complexes. Shailesh Sampat of SNC-Lavalin discusses how the acid plant design is customised to match the product mix and the energy requirements of the complex to provide the optimum solution for energy and material requirements.

Ricardo L. Sepulveda of PegasusTSI reviews options to decrease the CO2 footprint of a fertilizer industrial complex and illustrates the technical and economic feasibility of utilising clean energy from a sulphuric acid plant in a fertilizer complex to produce green hydrogen, which in turn can be used to produce green methanol or green ammonia.

It was supposedly Lenin who said that there were “weeks when decades happen”, and the past few weeks have felt very much like that. The outbreak of conflict in Ukraine has sent shockwaves across the world and may have changed it permanently.

Developments in the Russia-Ukraine conflict is going to be a key influence for the sulphur market through the year. The potential loss of Russian sulphur to key import markets such as North Africa and Latin America is likely to lead to trade flows increasing to these regions from the Middle East and North America.

A new cost-effective alternative sulphur technology, providing a simple and robust process to achieve an overall sulphur recovery efficiency of 99.9+% is being developed by Saudi Aramco. J. P. O’Connell and I.A. Alami of Saudi Aramco discuss the new technology, its benefits and current stage of development.

A complete listing of all articles and news items that appeared in Sulphur magazine during 2021.

DuPont has agreed to sell its Clean Technologies business for $510 million to an international private equity consortium, comprising BroadPeak Global, Asia Green Fund and The Saudi Arabian Industrial Investments Company (Dussur). The new, independent company has been named Elessent Clean Technologies and will be a global leader in process technologies to drive sustainability and carbon neutrality in the metal, fertilizer, chemical and oil refining industries. Elessent retains exclusive rights to the technologies, expertise, products, and services including: MECS® sulphuric acid and environmental technologies, BELCO® scrubbing technologies, STRATCO® alkylation technology and IsoTherming® hydroprocessing technology. Derived from the words “element” and “essential,” Elessent says that it will help customers produce, optimise or separate essential elements every day, creating clean alternatives to traditional industrial processes to minimise the impact on the environment while enabling our customers to produce essential elements critical to everyday life.

Nutrien Ltd has announced that Mayo Schmidt has left his position as president and CEO of Nutrien and has resigned from the Board. Ken Seitz , Executive Vice President and CEO of Potash, has been named the company’s interim CEO. Seitz brings extensive global leadership experience in the agriculture and mining sectors and is well-positioned to progress the company’s stated strategy and lead the integrated business during the transition.