
Nitrogen + Syngas 2023
CRU’s Nitrogen + Syngas conference convened at the Hyatt Regency Barcelona Tower in Barcelona, from March 5th-8th.
CRU’s Nitrogen + Syngas conference convened at the Hyatt Regency Barcelona Tower in Barcelona, from March 5th-8th.
BASF says that its high-pressure regenerative CO2 capture technology HiPACT ® , codeveloped by BASF and engineering partner JGC Corporation will be used by INPEX, one of Japan’s largest exploration and production companies, in its Kashiwazaki Clean Hydrogen/Ammonia Project. This is Japan’s first demonstration project for the production of blue hydrogen/ammonia from domestically produced natural gas, the consistent implementation of carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) in domestic depleted gas fields and the use of hydrogen for power generation and ammonia production. The project is funded by the Japanese governmental organization New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).
The world’s most common syngas production method remains steam methane reforming, a process which has a substantial CO2 footprint as the necessary reaction heat is supplied by combustion of hydrocarbons. Topsoe’s eREACT™ technology allows for the first-of-its-kind electrification of the traditional SMR process. The reaction heat for eREACT™ is instead generated directly by (renewable) electricity, thereby eliminating the flue gas altogether. Having gone through scale-up from bench scale to industrially relevant pilot scale the technology is now ready for industrial application.
ExxonMobil has awarded the contract for front-end engineering and design (FEED) of what it describes as the world’s largest low-carbon hydrogen production facility. A final investment decision for the project is expected by 2024, subject to stakeholder support, regulatory permitting, and market conditions. Technip Energies will conduct the FEED for the Baytown integrated complex, which will produce up to 1 bcf/d of low carbon hydrogen, while capturing more than 98% of associated CO2 emissions, totalling around 7 million tCO2 e/year. Offtake agreements are reportedly under discussion with third party customers. Start-up is planned for 2027-2028. The carbon capture and storage network being developed for the project will also be made available for use by third-party CO2 emitters in the area in support of their decarbonisation efforts.
Lithium miner Ioneer Ltd has signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding with Shell Canada Energy for the supply of sulphur to Ioneer for its Rhyolite Ridge lithium-boron project in Esmeralda County, Nevada. Ionner said in a statement that “securing the supply of key reagents for ore processing is an important step along the critical pathway to developing the Rhyolite Ridge project”. Under the memorandum, Ioneer will purchase up to 500,000 t/a of high-quality sulphur from Shell, which would fulfil the estimated annual sulphur requirement for the Project.
CRU Events will host the 2023 Nitrogen + Syngas conference and exhibition at the Hyatt Regency Barcelona Tower in Barcelona, 6-8 March.
Stamicarbon has won a contract for a large-scale urea project in China. The urea plant, with a production capacity of 3,800 t/d, will be the largest ever licensed by Stamicarbon in the country. The customer, the plant’s location and the value of the contract have not been disclosed.
Fulcrum BioEnergy says that it has successfully produced low-carbon synthetic crude oil using landfill waste as a feedstock at its Sierra BioFuels Plant, the world’s first commercial-scale landfill waste-to-fuels plant. Located outside of Reno, Nevada, Sierra will produce approximately 11 million gallons of renewable, low-carbon transportation fuels each year from approximately 175,000 t/a of landfill waste.
Topsoe has made a number of changes to its board. Kim Saaby Hedegaard has been appointed as the company’s new Executive Vice President, Power-to-X. Hedegaard has served as interim Head of Power-to-X since May 2022. Before that, he held the position as Chief Operations Officer (COO). He joined Topsoe in 1999 and has since held various leadership positions within engineering, technology, and sales. Since 2017, he was responsible for Catalyst Production and Technology globally. He holds a MSc in chemical engineering from the Technical University of Denmark. He is replaced as COO by Andreas Bruun Jørgensen.
A report on CRU’s annual Sulphur + Sulphuric Acid conference, which returned to being face to face meeting at the end of October 2022.