Section: CRUFI Features

CRU’s Laura Cross guides us through the current Covid-19 crisis and flags up the unique risks faced by the fertilizer industry as the pandemic unfolds.

We highlight recent innovations in sulphuric acid plant design and construction. NORAM and CPPE are offering a new hybrid sulphuric acid process. KVT, meanwhile, has upgraded its wet sulphuric acid technology to reduce capex, opex and emissions. Improved methods of construction and new materials from Koch Knight are also helping to optimise acid tower design

Nutrien has temporarily shut down one of the four ammonia plants at its Trinidad production site.

Nutrien is the world’s largest crop nutrient company with a market capitalisation of almost $20 billion (Figure 1). This fertilizer industry giant produces and distributes over 25 million tonnes of potash, nitrogen and phosphate products for agricultural, industrial and feed customers globally. The company’s agriculture retail business also serves over 500,000 growers worldwide through a network of international outlets.

Three large-scale phosphoric acid plants constructed as part of the world-class Umm Wu’al project in Saudi Arabia are now fully operational. James Byrd of Worley (formerly Jacobs ECR) describes the execution of the project from basic engineering through to plant performance tests.

The DA-HF phosphoric acid process has been successfully implemented at Grupa Azoty’s Police fertilizer production plant in Poland, as part of a revamp of the site’s existing DH plant. Sébastien Havelange and Alexandre Wavreille of Prayon Technologies outline the performance improvements achieved by this first-of-its-kind plant.

We profile the US ‘big three’ North American phosphate producers, Mosaic, Nutrien and Simplot, and disruptive market entrant Itafos.

Russia’s urea research & design institute, NIIK, introduces the Foam Hydrofilter – a completely new type of wet scrubber for air pollution control at urea plants. The Hydrofilter offers the same operational efficiency as many conventional scrubbing systems while avoiding many of their drawbacks.

We look at safety, health and environmental (SHE) management and hazards at nitrogen fertilizer plants and the importance of the International Fertilizer Association’s ‘Protect & Sustain’ certification scheme.

We look at state-of-the-art technology used in phosphate and potash mining, including equipment and systems for excavation, tailings thickening, transport, tunnelling and processing.