Tag: BASF

Corrosion Resistant Alloys, LP, a manufacturer of high-grade corrosion resistant alloy tubes, has appointed Tom W. Slaughter in a business development and advisory role. Based in Houston, Slaughter will be responsible for building relationships with strategic partners, including customers and suppliers. Slaughter’s background is as an industry leader in high-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) and deep gas applications with more than 40 years of global industry experience. Most recently, Slaughter served as president of Energy Alloys, Advanced Tubulars beginning in 2007. Prior to this role, he served as president of CRA from 2001 to 2007 where he had full responsibility for global sales and supply chain and worked directly with domestic and international end users of specialty CRA OCTG products.

Norilsk Nickel has finally closed down its nickel smelting operation at Nikel in Russia’s Murmansk region; the company’s oldest still operating production facility. The shutdown is part of the company’s environmental programme, which aims to significantly reduce its environmental impact at all production sites. The Nikel closure will eliminate SO2 emissions in the cross-border area with Norway, which had become a major bone of contention with the Norwegian government. Norilsk aims to reduce SO2 emissions at Kola by 50% by the end of 2020 and 85% by the end of 2021, and is modernising its production in Monchegorsk, including the construction of new state-of-the-art facilities.

The coronavirus outbreak necessitated a ‘virtual’ CRU Sulphur + Sulphuric Acid conference last year, held in November 2020.

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?

A look back at some of the major events of 2020 for the sulphur and sulphuric acid industries, as well as a look forward as to how 2021 might look.

New approaches and novel processing schemes employing oxygen enrichment in sulphur recovery units have been developed and commercialised. In this feature Siirtec Nigi, Linde, Blasch, Fluor and RATE report on their latest developments.

Spanish fertilizer producer Fertiberia is teaming up with energy firm Iberdrola to build Europe’s largest plant for generating green hydrogen for industrial use – in this case ammonia production. The 100MW solar plant and accompanying 20 MWh lithium-ion battery system and 20MW electrolytic hydrogen production system will be built at a cost of $174 million, and electrolyse water to produce 720 t/a of hydrogen. When fed into Fertiberia’s existing ammonia plant at Puertollano, 250km south of Madrid, the hydrogen will allow a 10% reduction in natural gas use by the plant, saving the company 39,000 t/a in annual CO 2 emissions. Start-up is planned for 2021. Fertiberia will also use electrolysis-generated oxygen as a raw material for nitric acid, which is used to produce ammonium nitrate at the site.

Falling costs for production of hydrogen by electrolysis are encouraging more serious consideration of using recovered carbon dioxide as a feedstock for chemicals and even fuels production.

Enhanced efficiency fertilizers (EEFs) occupy a small but high-value segment of the overall fertilizer market, although their production and use is accelerating. This trend is unsurprising given that their higher costs are usually more than offset by better efficiency and lower application rates.

Merchant ammonia capacity, only a relatively small 10% of overall ammonia demand, has been expanding in recent years and was already in surplus even before the current Covid crisis, but longer term a shortage of new projects may tighten the market again.