China Works
Black Prince Road
London, SE1 7SJ
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)20 7793 2567
Publication > Issue > Articles
The Asian market for urea
Summary
Rapidly growing demand is likely to draw in more imports from cheap gas-based capacity in the Middle East, but China's coal-based production remains a wild card.Abstract
Asia is the largest market for urea in the world, with the huge populations of south and east Asia consuming two thirds of the world’s urea. China and India alone represent nearly 60% of global urea demand, as Table 1 shows. Historically both countries have also been major producers, but feedstock supply constraints have started to place a crimp on new developments in India.
Growing hunger for urea
Summary
Bangladesh is attempting to develop new domestic urea capacity in order to meet rising domestic agricultural demand, but export-oriented schemes are also part of the mix. David Hayes reports.Abstract
Rising agricultural production has created growing demand for urea and other fertilizer in Bangladesh during the past decade. With urea imports now totalling about 750,000 t/a, equivalent to about 25% of total domestic demand, the government is considering various options for the construction of new ammonia-urea production facilities to use indigenous natural gas and increase the country’s level of self-sufficiency in fertilizer and food production.
Plans to increase urea production will involve expanding domestic natural gas production. The government recently has launched a $413m programme to expand the national gas transmission and distribution network to meet its target of increasing gas supplies 80% by 2015. Building up gas supplies for electricity generation to tackle the growing power shortage is top priority though other gas users, particularly the fertilizer industry will benefit from the increase in gas supplies.
Powerhouse of the ammonia industry
Summary
In spite of the seemingly inexorable rise of the Middle East, Russia remains a dominant force in the international nitrogen industry. Nitrogen + Syngas looks at the prospects for ammonia and downstream products in the new Russia.Abstract
The Russian economy has rebounded after the traumas of perestroika and the rouble crash of 1998, and with oil and gas prices high these are boom years for the country. GDP has grown for the past seven years in a row; in 2004 GDP growth was 7.1% and although it slowed to 5.9% in 2005, it has averaged 6.4% since 1998. Resurgent consumer demand and increased investment are also in evidence. Real fixed capital investments have averaged more than 10% over the last five years, and real personal incomes have increased by an average of 12%. Foreign debt has fallen from 90% of GDP to just 31%, and thanks to record oil sales foreign reserves have leapt from $12bn to $180bn. Business and investor confidence has returned to the Russian economy.
The downside is that that Russia effectively remains a petro-state just as much as Saudi Arabia or Venezuela; raw materials still represent more than 80% of exports, making the economy very vulnerable to any downturn in prices. Russia’s manufacturing base still requires considerable investment and restructuring. And more worryingly for foreign investors, there is a creeping move back towards state control of and intervention in the economy. President Putin has shown his willingness to use state power against political rivals in his prosecution of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former boss of major oil and gas producer Yukos. State control over major energy companies has actually increased, and the government has not been afraid to use them as foreign policy levers over neighbouring countries, as the gas dispute with the Ukraine last winter showed. Indeed, some now talk of a new ‘Russian model’ for national energy companies, with the state continuing to hold the levers of power via 51% controlling stakes in several oil and gas producing companies,
Asia continues to drive DME development
Summary
Following the success of the first DME conference in Paris in 2004, a second meeting was held in London from 16th–17th May, with developments in Asia once again to the forefront.Abstract
A new entrant in the arena of syngas-based chemicals is dimethyl ether (DME). Although current production is relatively modest, there are plans for production to be several million tonnes per year in just a few years time, with a number of companies working on processes and plants. Conference organiser the International DME Association also continues to grow in size, and now this year has formally linked with the China DME Association. China DME was only founded as recently as September 2005, but represents the massive interest in this versatile chemical in the far East.
As with last year there was a lot packed into the two days of the conference, with 33 papers given, many in parallel sessions.
The drier the better
Summary
A new synthesis gas drying system has reduced the overall energy consumption and significantly increased the production capacity of two ammonia plants in Ukraine.Abstract
In any ammonia plant it is absolutely vital to prevent even small traces of oxygen-containing species from entering the synthesis reactor because of their damaging effect on the catalyst. The worst of these is carbon monoxide, which leaches iron from the catalyst as deadly iron carbonyl, Fe(CO)5, which will end up in the purge gas. But carbon dioxide and moisture are also deleterious because they oxidise the iron, and even though it may be reduced again by the action of the hydrogen in the synthesis gas, this causes deterioration in its physical condition. In a gasification-based plant using a liquid nitrogen wash as the ultimate synthesis gas purification stage, all of these species are removed almost completely, but not many plants today run on that principle. The majority of today’s plants use steam reforming to generate their synthesis gas, and the last purification stage is nearly always methanation, which converts the carbon monoxide and the majority of the carbon dioxide remaining after the CO2 removal system into methane. This is harmless towards the synthesis catalyst, although as an inert diluent it does have an adverse effect on the equilibrium conversion in the ammonia synthesis reaction. But no matter how efficiently the synthesis gas purification train functions, the gas leaving the methanation stage will always still contain moisture because it is generated in the methanation reaction. It may also contain traces of unconverted carbon dioxide.
Fair wind for FB technology
Summary
Now it has been transferred to Uhde Fertilizer Technology, there are no longer any doubts about the availability of the Yara fluidised-bed granulation process. But now it's got another competitor.Abstract
Urea is today the most widely used nitrogen fertiliser in the world, and that very fact is very largely due to the development of fluidised-bed granulation processes, which can produce in a single unit very large volumes of high-quality granules in the optimum size range.
In an attempt to find a satisfactory alternative to prilling, various companies researched special granulation techniques in the 1960s and 1970s based on the accretion of molten feed onto seed particles. In the UK, Fisons Fertilizers (which was later sold to Norsk Hydro, now Yara) did some work on a drum-based melt granulation process,1 whilst Norsk Hydro (Yara) itself developed a pan granulation process which produced high-quality granules and was used on a commercial scale in the company’s own fertiliser operations.2 Another process which produces good-quality urea granules is the Spherodizer, originally developed by C&I/Girdler and still available today from Hicks Equipment, Inc. In this process the functions of granulation and drying and/or cooling are performed in compartments of a single drum.2,3 But none of these processes was suitable for scaling up to the huge single-stream capacities that the market was beginning to demand – the Spherodizer, for example, has a limit of about 500 t/d per unit.