Tag: Revamping

Saipem, Stamicarbon, Toyo Engineering Corporation and KBR showcase recent projects and latest technology for urea and nitric acid plants.

The internals of ammonia synthesis converters are generally made of austenitic stainless steel to withstand the harsh operating conditions (high temperature, high pressure and synthesis gas containing hydrogen and ammonia). Since nitriding is the most critical material degradation for the converter internals, Casale has set up a large nitriding analysis campaign. In the last decade, samples of materials operated under different pressures and temperatures and for different time spans have been tested and analysed. The data obtained has been used to increase nitriding knowledge and to establish a correlation to predict nitriding rate to allow the most suitable material and relevant thickness to be selected. L. Redaelli and G. Deodato of Casale report on how this correlation was established and provide valuable insight on this phenomenon and how to predict and control it.

With the sulphur content of crude oil and natural gas on the increase and with the ever-tightening sulphur content in fuels, refiners and gas processors will require additional sulphur recovery capacity. At the same time, environmental regulatory agencies of many countries continue to promulgate more stringent standards for sulphur emissions from oil, gas and chemical processing facilities. Rameshni & Associates Technology and Engineering discusses options for compliance with new regulations on emissions regarding IMO 2020 compliance and report on the results and evaluation of three case studies. Worley Comprimo reports on the revamp of a sulphur complex built in the late 1980s at a refinery in East Asia with the aim to increase the capacity, improve the availability and reliability and make the unit environmental compliant.

From new materials of construction and improved equipment designs to the latest digital tools, Casale, thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions, Saipem, TOYO and Stamicarbon report on some of their latest achievements.

An industry-wide push for greater environmentally accountability is driving the need for improved fertilizer cooling methods. Not only is indirect cooling technology more environmentally-friendly, says Igor Makarenko of Solex Thermal Science, it also provides fertilizer manufacturers with a better product.

Fertilizer International presents a global round-up of phosphate rock, phosphoric acid and finished phosphates projects.

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.

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.

The DA-HF phosphoric acid process has been successfully implemented at Grupa Azoty’s Police fertilizer production plant in Poland, as part of a revamp of the site’s existing DH plant. Sébastien Havelange and Alexandre Wavreille of Prayon Technologies outline the performance improvements achieved by this first-of-its-kind plant.

BASF has developed a new generation of promoter system compatible with MDEA solutions named OASE® yellow. The new promoter system increases the selectivity and capacity of the amine solvent, resulting in improved performance of tail gas treating units and allowing the processing of more sour crudes. A. Kern and G. Vorberg of BASF discuss two case studies demonstrating the benefits of OASE yellow.