Section: CRUNS Market & Features

With the current focus on decarbonising ammonia production, Johnson Matthey explains the important role of high activity ammonia synthesis catalyst in the production of green ammonia.

Merchant markets for ammonia have faced considerable disruption in recent years due to the covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

Tampa ammonia contract prices increased dramatically during September, from $395/tonne c.fr to $575/ tonne c.fr. The main culprit was plant outages and reduced production at several plants in the region. The tight supply situation was exacerbated by a delay to the restart of Ma’aden’s 1.1 million t/a ammonia plant in Saudi Arabia.

Ballestra is taking a new approach to improving nutrient use efficiency by moving methylene-urea production to the fertilizer industry. Massimo Gori and Svet Valkov of Ballestra discuss the technology and benefits of having a slow-release fertilizer that uses a product from within the fertilizer industry.

Distributed and carbon-free ammonia production with Stami Green Ammonia technology offers a highly competitive alternative to conventional grey processes, paving the way for scaling up and sustaining local communities with renewable energy sources.

Hindustan Platinum describes two recent start-up issues with catalyst gauze packs at a nitric acid plant, and their remediation to allow production to continue.

Steinmüller Engineering shares its experiences of applying CFD to re-design the waste heat boiler downstream of the secondary reformer to successfully achieve the desired uniform cross flow across the tube bundle.

With low carbon ammonia and methanol being considered not just for their chemical and fertilizer uses, but as fuels, can we make enough of them to fill our energy needs?

Low carbon production is attracting considerable attention to using syngas derivatives as fuels, but there are considerable logistical and commercial barriers to overcome.

Market Insight courtesy of Argus Media