Tag: Battery

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 ® .

In early October Tesla held a ‘battery day’ event at its headquarters in Fremont, California. Speaking at the event, company founder and CEO Elon Musk outlined his vision for the electric car industry over the coming decades, and spoke particularly to his ambitions for the nickel industry. He had already called for more mining of nickel earlier in the year, and has said that Tesla is developing cathodes that will contain higher nickel and no cobalt. The latter comes after a lawsuit against Tesla and several other high-tech US firms for allegedly supporting human rights violations by buying cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Musk echoed the potential ‘reputational risk’ for the nickel market and called for more sustainable nickel production, dangling the prospect of a “giant contract” with any miners that could produce nickel in an “environmentally sensitive way.” Tesla is reportedly in discussions with Vale and BHP as well as the Indonesian government concerning potential investments in nickel production.

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.

Recent protests in Belarus have triggered a wave of share price volatility, London’s Financial Times reported on 18th August.

Sulphur demand in Australia has been boosted by the restart of the nickel leaching plant at Ravensthorpe, and new HPAL projects are under development, but a slew of new phosphate projects are not scheduled to consume more acid domestically.

There was a rapid increase in sulphuric acid demand for copper, uranium and nickel leaching from 1995-2015, but over the past few years growth in this sector has slowed dramatically. Now however there are signs that demand is starting to pick up again with several new projects under development.

The Indonesian government’s decision to enforce the processing of more copper and nickel ores domestically rather than export them to China has led to the rapid development of domestic smelter capacity as well as nickel acid leaching projects.

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.

The Ma’aden Wa’ad Al Shamal Phosphate Company (MWSPC) has signed a service agreement for a period of three years with DuPont Clean Technologies for its sulphuric acid plant at Sirhan. The service programme will include activity testing of catalyst samples, evaluation of catalyst performance, plant optimisation, troubleshooting and management of catalyst replacement. DuPont says that it will also track plant performance and assess its overall health using pre-agreed metrics and its proprietary PeGASyS™ gas chromatography system, which can be used to detect possible leaks in gas-gas heat exchangers, identify SO2 gas bypassing and measure overall plant conversion in order to optimise plant operation, reduce SO 2 emissions, increase production and improve converter performance.

M. van Son and S. Sreejit of Comprimo present a case study involving the design and potential integration of the sour water and acid gas treatment units for a renewable diesel facility with an existing refinery sulphur complex. The case study evaluates the potential for operating cost reduction by integrating an enrichment loop in the acid gas treatment plant as well as for using the existing infrastructure of the refinery to limit emissions.