Section: CRUNS Market & Features

Alistair Wallace, Head of Fertilizer Research, Argus Media, assesses price trends and the market outlook for nitrogen.

Ammonia supplies have been curtailed by production shutdowns, including Kaltim and PT PAU in Indonesia, SABIC and Ma’aden in Saudi Arabia, Sorfert in Algeria and Chinese gas-based producers. There have also been gas curtailments in Iran and Trinidad.

In a carbon-constrained world, carbon capture and utilisation or storage (CCUS) installed on a methanol plant is a necessary and feasible solution. The new, patented AdWinMethanol CC® technology, jointly developed by thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions AG and GasConTec GmbH, integrates carbon capture into large-scale, natural gas-fuelled methanol production to yield a drastically reduced carbon footprint. U. Koss and W. Balthasar of GasConTec and J. Wagner of thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions discuss how it removes CO 2 emissions in an efficient, cost effective, and environmentally friendly manner, taking advantage of the design features of AdWinMethanol ® .

Alistair Wallace , Head of Fertilizer Research, Argus Media, assesses price trends and the market outlook for nitrogen.

Malte Plewa, Volker Schmidt, Daniel Ávila and Enrico Rubertus of German development agency GIZ and Dr. Silke Karcher of the German Environment Ministry (BMU) discuss action on climate change from nitric acid production and the Nitric Acid Climate Action Group (NACAG) and its global initiative for mitigating emissions.

By harnessing the power of real-time data and exploiting the opportunities provided by digital solutions plant owners can achieve greater plant efficiency and reliability. In this article Stamicarbon shows the benefits of the Stami Digital Plant Optimiser for urea plants, OnPoint Digital Solutions provides a case study on optimising primary reformer heater operations using Smart Combustion™ , TOYO provides an update on its digital transformation service DX-PLANT® and thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions provides examples of how digital solutions can be used to improve plant operation.

Every five years since 1955, the Chinese government has prepared its ‘Five Year Plan’ for the country’s economy over the coming half decade. This year, the 14th Five Year Plan is being drafted, and given the influence of the Chinese economy over the global chemical sector, its conclusions will be eagerly awaited.

A few years ago DME production from methanol gave a major boost to world methanol demand, with DME being used as a blendstock for LPG. However, demand plateaued and DME has not had the takeoff that its proponents feel it should have. Could new renewable DME processes give it the boost it needs?

thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions discusses a revamping concept to reduce CO2 emissions by replacing some of the hydrogen in the front end of the ammonia plant with green hydrogen, KBR and Casale report on revamp options to increase the capacity of vintage ammonia plants in the former Soviet Union, Johnson Matthey presents a novel integrated ammonia flowsheet for the production of ammonia, methanol, urea and UFC and Arvos | Schmidtsche Schack discusses the benefits of a new process gas boiler.

Ammonia prices have been on a rising trend over the past few months as plant closures begin to make themselves felt. Yara’s Baltic ammonia price also rose sharply at the start of October, and Nutrien’s announcement of the closure of its PCS-03 plant on Trinidad helped lift prices, with Yara and Mosaic’s contract prices rising $16/t in October.