Tag: Sulphuric Acid

Meena Chauhan, Head of Sulphur and Sulphuric Acid Research, Argus Media, assesses price trends and the market outlook for sulphur.

This is the 400th issue of Sulphur magazine, now in its 69th year. From its beginnings as the Quarterly Bulletin of the Sulphur Exploration Syndicate, it remains the only magazine dedicated to both the sulphur and sulphuric acid industries.

A new fully automated process has been developed that combines real time H2 S readings from an H2 S analyser and Q2 Technologies’ proprietary scavenger chemistry to treat high H2 S crude oil on demand. The process provides an efficient and effective way to administer the chemical product to avoid overtreating or undertreating. In some cases, the end user is seeing greater than 50% savings. It is a unique confluence of technology including IoT, advanced chemistry, and oil and gas personnel incentivised to demonstrate continuous improvement.

The Jordan Phosphate Mines Company (JPMC) has signed a supply agreement with Germany’s LUMA-International Company.Under the terms of the agreement, JPMC will sell 850,000 t/a of phosphate rock to the German company at international market rates. The agreement was signed by JPMC CEO Abdulwahab Rawad and managing director of LUMA-International Ralf Keller, in the presence of JPMC Chairman Muhammad Thneibat. Thneibat expressed hope that the deal would open wider scopes of cooperation between the JPMC and German companies in the field of phosphate fertilizers, and Keller likewise said that his company was looking forward to more cooperation with the JPMC and new partnerships to produce phosphoric acid and phosphate fertilizers.

The ongoing conflict in Russia-Ukraine remains a key focus for the market in the months ahead. It is unclear whether buyers that are currently doing so will permanently choose non-Russian sulphur sources, but trade flow changes are expected to persist through the rest of 2022.

Sulphur prices keep on climbing. A quick check as I was writing this showed some indicators above $600/t, around four times what they were last year. As the title of this editorial suggests, what goes up must of course eventually come back down, but of course as always the question is: when?

EuroChem has made a binding offer for Borealis Group’s fertilizer, melamine and technical nitrogen business.

Meena Chauhan, Head of Sulphur and Sulphuric Acid Research, Argus Media, assesses price trends and the market outlook for sulphur.

German slurry handling specialist Vogelsang has just launched a new acidification technology which it claims will reduce ammonia emissions from agriculture, reducing up to 70% of ammonia to nutrient rich ammonium. Its new SyreN technology is an onboard sulphuric acid dosing system for tractors that treats slurry or digestate as it is applied to the land. It uses a front-linkage mounted unit to carry the acid, which also improves tractor weight distribution. The acid is dosed when the organic fertiliser is fed to the applicator, with a pH regulator automatically controlling and adjusting the flow. Nitrogen uptake of organic fertilizer is also increased by up to 1/3 as the ammonium is more easily metabolised by the soil. Results from a study in Germany showed that the acidifying slurry increased crop yield by up to 20%. The sulphur contained in the acid also becomes available to the plants as sulphate after spreading, eliminating the need for an additional pass over the field to administer a supplementary sulphur fertiliser, such as ammonium sulphate nitrate. At approximately 30 kg/ha, the amount of sulphur introduced into the crop with the SyreN system corresponds to the average amount of sulphur that is already applied to crops in the course of a growing season.

With climate change looming there is an increased focus on reducing the environmental footprint of the production of fertilizers. The use of renewable energy/green hydrogen is one way to make the fertilizer industry more environmentally sustainable. In this article, Rene Dijkstra of Chemetics introduces the Green Fertilizer Complex. This practical solution integrates an oxygen-based sulphuric acid plant using the Chemetics’ patented CORE-SO2™ process with a green hydrogen and ammonia facility to deliver low cost, low emission, and carbon-free phosphate (MAP/DAP) and/or sulphate (AMS) based ammonia fertilizers.