Tag: Urea

Paradeep Phosphates Limited (PPL) and Mangalore Chemicals & Fertilizers Limited (MCFL) have agreed to merge.

More than 900 delegates from 400 companies and 56 countries gathered at the Hilton Downtown Hotel, Miami, Florida, 5-7 February, for the 2024 Fertilizer Latino Americano (FLA) conference. The event was jointly convened by Argus and CRU. We present selected highlights from this year’s three-day conference.

Urea. As February ended, urea prices found support in the US and Brazil while Europe remained subdued and Egypt struggled to find buyers. New Orleans was the one bright spot in the urea market – with NOLA prices benefitting from the meeting of suppliers and buyers at the TFI’s domestic conference. With positive sentiment all round, prices moved up $30/st, peaking at $390/st f.o.b. for March.

Mark Brouwer and Jo Eijkenboom of ureaknowhow.com examine the major shifts in global urea production. They also discuss the future of the urea industry and, in particular, how the sector is being affected by the increasing focus on low-carbon ammonia production.

Specialty fertilizer products represent a small volume, high value segment of the overall fertilizer market that’s been growing at around four percent per annum in recent years. Economic, environmental, regulatory and agronomic imperatives are driving up their adoption – and an overall shift from volume to value in the fertilizer market.

Prices will remain stable-to-soft across the board, though benchmarks could remain slightly more supported in the short-term than previously thought, with more significant declines likely in Q2-Q3.

Every urea plant is also a water plant as the overall reaction starts with two molecules of ammonia and one molecule of carbon dioxide resulting in one molecule of urea and one molecule of water. Further water is added to the process via the steam ejectors in the evaporation section. All this water, which is contaminated with ammonia, carbon dioxide and urea plus possibly other contaminants like formaldehyde, methanol, oil, etc is collected in an ammonia water tank and then sent to a wastewater treatment section. The purpose of the wastewater treatment section is to reduce the ammonia, carbon dioxide and urea levels to acceptable levels. First the wastewater is treated in a first desorber column, where LP steam is used to strip off the ammonia and carbon dioxide, reducing the ammonia content from approx. 6-8 wt-% ammonia to approx. 1 wt-% ammonia. Nothing happens with urea in the first desorber as temperatures are too low to hydrolyse the urea back to ammonia and carbon dioxide. This takes place in the next step, in the hydrolyser, which can be quite a large counter current column operating with MP steam at approx. 23 bar (Stamicarbon design) or a horizontal deep hydrolyser operating at approx. 33 bar (Saipem design, refer to figure). Downstream of the hydrolyser there is another desorber column to strip off the remaining ammonia and carbon dioxide. Nowadays, boiler feed water quality can be realised by modern wastewater treatment. But at higher plant loads the operating margin in the wastewater treatment can become too small leading to higher ammonia and urea levels during certain operating conditions… n

Nitrogen magazine, as it originally began life in It has been a tough few years for the European nitrogen industry, and between covid, gas price spikes and Russian sanctions, not all companies have weathered the storm. Now that the initial shock of the sky-high ammonia prices that the closure of the Black Sea and the cutting off of almost 40% of Europe’s gas supplies has passed, and the world gas and ammonia markets have largely adjusted to the new reality, prices are coming back down. But it seems that in its wake it may leave quite a different European nitrogen industry from the one that existed in 2019.

Ammonia pricing in the US Mid-West stood at $625/st f.o.b. in February, with applications to field continuing to ramp up. Prices in the US Gulf remain pegged in the low-to-mid$400s/t f.o.b. Recent production outages in the region have largely subsided, though an unexpectedly early uptick in seasonal demand from local buyers is likely to provide a degree of price support moving forward. The Tampa ammonia settlement for March has been settled by Yara and Mosaic at a $445/t c.fr rollover, largely in line with market expectations. The North American market remains detached from the considerably more oversupplied global ammonia scene.

Ammonia prices are expected to remain soft moving through January with little in the way of price support from both a supply and demand perspective. Weakened global sentiment was characterised by news of January’s Tampa settlement $100/t down on December at $525/t CFR, with further declines anticipated in Q1 once the Gulf Coast Ammonia (GCA) project comes online. Traders returned to their desks in the New Year and ammonia prices extended losses amid a stable supply outlook and a distinct lack of downstream industrial and fertilizer demand.