Tag: Gasification

India’s push to replace its sizeable urea imports with home grown capacity continues, but may not keep pace with rising domestic demand.

Repsol has approved a historic €800 million investment in Ecoplanta, a pioneering project in Europe to transform urban waste into renewable fuels and circular products, adding a solution for reducing CO2 emissions in the transport sector, while at the same time promoting the circular economy. Located in Tarragona, the facility will be the first in Europe to produce methanol from municipal waste via a gasification process developed by Enerkem - a technology company in which Repsol is a partner – using waste that would otherwise end up in landfills or be incinerated.

Maire Group subsidiary MET Development, together with Eni and utility company Iren Ambiente, have started the permitting process for a renewable methanol and hydrogen plant at Eni’s refinery in Sannazzaro de’ Burgondi near Pavia. The plant will be developed using NextChem’s NX Circular™ technology, which allows the plant to convert waste by generating syngas, which is subsequently used to produce high quality sustainable fuels and chemicals. Once completed, the plant will be able to convert approximately 200,000 t/a of non-recyclable waste supplied by Iren’s waste management unit Iren Ambiente into synthesis gas. This will in turn be converted to produce up to 110,000 t/a of renewable methanol, as a potential fuel for decarbonisation of the maritime sector. It will also produce up to 1,500 t/a of hydrogen, which could be used in refinery processes, reducing CO2 emissions compared to fossil-generated hydrogen, or, alternatively, for sustainable mobility in road and rail transport. The plant will also recover 33,000 t/a of inert granulate, which can be used for the cement industry. The plant will use infrastructure and services already available at the refinery to optimise costs.

While there is still a considerable push for use of biomass waste as a lower carbon feedstock for chemical production via gasification to syngas, biological processes such as fermentation are increasingly gaining traction as an alternative.

Carbon Recycling International (CRI), which operates a geothermally powered green methanol plant at Svartsengi, 40km southwest of Reykjavik, had to evacuate its site in late November when a 3km fissure opened in the earth a few kilometres away and lava began spilling across adjacent land. Satellite photos of the area taken on November 24 show a large field of molten and cooled lava to the north, west, and south of Svartsengi, though the plant itself remained undamaged. CRI’s Iceland facility runs on CO2 , water, and renewable electricity from the Svartsengi geothermal power station. CRI says the low-carbon energy source allows it to produce 4,000 t/a of methanol with a greenhouse gas footprint just 10–20% that of conventional methanol.

In spite of increasing environmental concerns over the use of coal as a feedstock, it continues to provide around one quarter of the world’s ammonia. But in a world that is decarbonising, is there still a future for coal-based capacity?

A look at the safety challenges that face developers of ammonia-powered shipping vessels before it can become used more widely as a low carbon fuel.

As refiners adapt to the transition to a lower carbon economy, different strategies are likely to impact upon sulphur output.

As environmental SO2 emission regulations become more stringent, tail gas treating options become limited. To potentially achieve lower opex and improved plot plan, utilising a biological desulphurisation process as an alternative to a conventional amine-based TGT unit is becoming of increased interest in the oil and gas industry. At the same time, demands for increased SRU capacity and reliability favour the use of medium and high-level oxygen enrichment.

Qatar construction services company UCC Holding has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Kazakh Ministry of Energy for a gas treatment plant at the Kashagan field with a capacity of 6 billion cubic meters as part of the Phase 2B expansion. The memorandum was signed by Minister of Energy Almassadam Satkaliyev and Mohamed Moutaz Al Khayyat, chairman of UCC Holding.