Tag: Waste

Ineos subsidiary Inovyn has announced the permanent closure of its ‘sulphur chemicals’ (mainly sulphuric acid) plant at its Runcorn site, and its withdrawal from the UK sulphur chemicals market. The company said in a statement that the decision follows a management review of the business in the light of recent events. Specifically, in October 2020, an unexpected interruption to the third-party power supply to the Runcorn site resulted in the plant being taken offline, and during restart, it was identified that a number of critical plant components had suffered significant damage. As a result, to ensure the safety and integrity of the plant it was taken back offline. Since then, in spite of significant effort and investment to rectify these issues, Inovyn says that it has become clear that it will not be possible to safely restart the plant for at least a further 18-24 months, and the company has decided to close the plant permanently.

Gasification technology offers the promise of being able to convert the increasing volumes of municipal waste generated by society into useful chemical products. In spite of a patchy commercial record, interest in the process remains high.

Reducing the carbon footprint in the synthesis of chemicals is a new global challenge as the world works towards providing sustainable products designed to minimise their environmental impacts throughout their whole lifecycle. This article looks at the role of blue technologies as part of a roadmap towards the decarbonisation of fuels and chemicals.

We report on the latest potash mining and processing technology from Andritz, Ebner, Köppern, K+S and Veolia. Recent case studies for potash projects globally are also provided.

Wet sulphuric acid technology when used as tail gas treatment for a Claus unit, or in place of a Claus unit with amine-based tail gas unit, brings many benefits if there is a market for the sulphuric acid and steam. A new alternative is to have a WSA unit in combination with a Claus unit and to recycle the acid to the Claus unit for higher sulphur recovery efficiency.

Fertilizer coatings play an integral role in minimising the degradation of fertilizers during transport, handling and storage. Increasingly, customers also want to know if the coatings they buy are sustainable too. But what exactly is a sustainable fertilizer coating – and how can its sustainability be properly defined and measured? Lucas Moore , director of coatings technology at Arkema-ArrMaz, weighs up these thorny questions and provides some clear-cut answers.

Prayon’s Hadrien Leruth and Marc Sonveaux highlight the latest phosphate production developments at the company – and share their experience of how innovative ideas are validated, industrialised and turned into commercially-viable technologies.

A few years ago DME production from methanol gave a major boost to world methanol demand, with DME being used as a blendstock for LPG. However, demand plateaued and DME has not had the takeoff that its proponents feel it should have. Could new renewable DME processes give it the boost it needs?

ClimeCo says that it has promoted Dr. Scott Subler to Chief Science Officer (CSO). Subler has made an enduring mark on the carbon offset world over the last 15 years. From overseeing the first US offset delivery from a dairy farm methane capture project to chairing the Offsets Committee for the Chicago Climate Exchange, Subler has been a major influence on many carbon offset methodologies that are used today. His work investigating different types of lagoon cover systems for dairy and swine farms in different climates continues to impact new methane capture installations, and his advocacy for organic waste composting projects resulted in the protocol used today at the Climate Action Reserve.

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.