Tag: Yara

Maire Tecnimont’s innovation and licensing company Stamicarbon has been selected as the licensor for a urea project in sub-Saharan Africa, its first license in the region. Stamicarbon will deliver the process design package for the front-end engineering and design for a 4,000 t/d urea melt and granulation plant. The urea melt plant with a pool reactor will use Stamicarbon’s MP Flash design, a melt concept with improved energy efficiency, entailing a significant reduction of steam consumption. The minimal equipment items result in a significant reduction of the footprint and the overall capital cost of the plant. Less equipment also allows for a reduction in maintenance costs and OPEX savings.

As we near the end of the third quarter of 2022, the attention of the nitrogen industry is focused on the coming northern hemisphere winter, and the prospects for higher natural gas prices as temperatures fall and power and heating demands rise. Vladimir Putin has been stoking these worries to try and force a climbdown from European countries over the sanctions that followed his invasion of Ukraine, with the flow of gas through the Nordstream 1 pipeline across the Baltic Sea gradually dwindling over the summer and finally stopping altogether at the end of August due to “technical issues” – an explanation somewhat undermined by the subsequent statement from spokesman Dmitry Peskov that gas would flow again once sanctions were eased. This is a familiar enough tactic; Russia has used gas stoppages to pressure Ukraine and Europe several times over the past two decades.

Optimisation of the nitric acid process depends on good process visualisation tailored to the specific process parameters of the plant, improvements in combustion efficiency, reduction of N2 O emissions and the optimal use of platinum group metals.

The war in Ukraine has severely affected the supply of ammonium nitrate and CAN from Russia and Ukraine, with particular potential impact on Europe and Latin America. Can urea make up the difference?

A record rise in gas prices at the end of August triggered a spate of ammonia production curtailments across Europe. These included major shutdown announcements from CF Fertilisers UK, Grupa Azoty, Yara International and others.

T he high-price environment for fertilizers and other commodities, including natural gas, is having very different consequences globally.

Some 1,160 delegates from 475 companies and 76 countries gathered in Vienna, Austria, for the 89th International Fertilizer Association (IFA) Annual Conference, 30 May – 1 June 2022. We report on the main highlights of this three-day flagship event.

Applying dissolved fertilizers via micro-irrigation systems or leaf sprayers offers commercial fruit and vegetable growers clear-cut gains – in terms of input costs, nutrient use efficiency, labour, time and energy.

The drive for ever higher crop yields is shifting the focus onto secondary nutrients such as calcium and magnesium. In this article, we look at the role of magnesium and calcium in crop nutrition and the main fertilizer product options.

In a major blow to the British fertilizer industry, CF Fertilisers UK announced the closure of its Ince production site in north-west England in June (see p8). Ince is the UK’s largest compound fertilizer producer, operating three NPK+S units. It also manufactures large volumes of ammonium nitrate (AN) for Britain’s farmers. At the heart of the Cheshire complex is Ince’s long-standing ammonia plant. Unfortunately, high natural gas costs have kept this shuttered since September last year.