Agrium - Redwater

Acid Plant Database April 27, 2018

Owner

Nutrien Limited

Location

Bag 20
Redwater, Alberta
Canada T0A 2W0

Background

Formerly
- Imperial Oil
- Esso Chemical Canada Ltd.
- Viridian Inc.
- Agrium, Inc.

Website

www.nutrien.com

Plant

Redwater Phosphate Operations

Plant No. 1

Plant No. 2

Coordinates*

53º 50' 43" N, 113º 5' 22" W

53º 50' 39" N, 113º 5' 22" W

Type of Plant

Sulphur Burning

Gas Source

Elemental Sulphur

Plant Capacity

2200 MTPD

1090 MTPD

SA/DA

3/1 DA

Status

Operating

Year Built

1975

1986

Technology

MECS

Contractor

Simon-Carves Canada

Equipment

Blower
Supplier: Elliott
Delivery Year: 1968
Model:
Quantity: 1
Flow Rate: 96100 CFM
Pressure Rise: 5.78 psi (160" WC)
Driver: 3000 Hp, Steam Turbine

Blower
Supplier: Elliott
Delivery Year: 1981
Model: 80P
Quantity: 1
Flow Rate: 120836 m³/h (71122 CFM)
Pressure Rise: 540 mbar (195" WC)
Driver: 2880 Hp, Steam Turbine

Remarks

Plant originally built as a single absorption plant. Converted to double absorption by the addition of a standalone Bed 4.

Pictures

	Old Converter
	Standalone Bed 4
	New converter under construction

General

References

News

April 26, 2018 - Nutrien Ltd. is getting out of the phosphate business in Canada by shutting down its Redwater facility, the only one of its kind in the country.Officials with the company have been spreading the news since it was announced earlier this year. Nutrien, created from the merger of Agrium and PotashCorp in January, will continue its phosphate operations but at its facilities in the United States.During his presentation at the Life in the Heartland event on April 18, Ted Sawchuk, plant manager at the Fort Saskatchewan operations, said the phosphate sales at the Redwater plant account for 50 per cent for Canada.“We are the only phosphate producer in Canada, at the current time,” he said. “Obviously with the mergers, there’s going to be synergies. One of the synergies that came out was the PotashCorp side had a lot of phosphate capacity. When we looked at their phosphate capacity, it became really, I would say, the best business decision overall is to shut down the Redwater phosphate.”The plant, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year just in time for the start of the shutdown, has 450 employees with on average a 100 contractors brought in every day and pays $6 million in property taxes. Sawchuk explained starting in 2019, the main phosphate plant will be shut down as well as the one sulphuric acid plant. This means there will no longer be any gypsum production being done as the company plans to reclaim the stacks over the years. Nutrien plans to double its ammonium sulphate production by spending $30 million to transform the facility to accommodate it. This is expected to take three months.Sawchuk said the company is not expecting “too many cuts” as it is believed attrition can handle most of the job losses.Mike Fedunec, the manager at the Redwater facility, said the official announcement of the shutdown happened less than a month ago so he and Sawchuk have been touring around to events like Life in the Heartland and the Redwater Mayor’s Breakfast to explain the news.“When word gets out that you are shutting down, you want to avoid panic in the streets,” he said. “We are converting basically. We are shutting down some plants, starting up a different one. Instead of having two products, we are going to have twice as much of one product.”Fedunec explained the shutdown process is expected to take a long time since the gypsum stack, for example, still has a lot of water in it. The company will have to build a water treatment plant to treat that water before anything can be done with it. The goal is to make it look similar to the stack in the Fort but with trees on it.As the company makes the transition, Fedunec said the company doesn’t have any plans for big layoffs at the moment.“Redwater is huge,” he added. “The phosphate side is less than half of the plant. We still have all of our nitrogen, we still have our urea, two ammonium plants, nitric acid. The nitrogen side is three times the size of the Fort site. The phosphate site is what we are working on.”

January 2, 2018 - Nutrien Ltd. today announced the successful completion of the merger of equals between Agrium Inc. and Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Inc., creating the world’s premier provider of crop inputs and services. Nutrien has the largest crop nutrient production portfolio combined with an unparalleled global retail distribution network that includes more than 1,500 farm retail centers. With nearly 20,000 employees – and operations and investments in 14 countries – the company is committed to providing products and services that help growers optimize crop yields and their returns.“Today we are proud to launch Nutrien, a company that will forge a unique position within the agriculture industry,” said Chuck Magro, President & Chief Executive Officer of Nutrien. “Our company will have an unmatched capability to respond to customer and market opportunities, focusing on innovation and growth across our retail and crop nutrient businesses. Importantly, we intend to draw upon the depth of our combined talent and best practices to build a new company that is stronger and better equipped to create value for all our stakeholders.”Nutrien common shares will trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol NTR beginning today. Trading of common shares of Agrium and PotashCorp was halted on the Toronto Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange concurrently with the listing of Nutrien common shares on such exchanges. The merger of equals resulted in PotashCorp shareholders receiving 0.40 common shares of Nutrien for each common share of PotashCorp they owned, and Agrium shareholders received 2.23 common shares of Nutrien for each common share of Agrium they owned.

March 31, 2011 - Agrium plans to cut sulphur dioxide emissions from its two sulphuric acid units at its Redwater fertilizer plant by roughly a third. The company's $800,000 project will reduce emissions at the plant by 215 metric tonnes a year from its current 690 metric tonnes a year. The company made the announcement in response to a report by the Fort Air Partnership saying the plant had exceeded provincial guidelines on a number of occasions last year. The Fort Air Partnership operates an air quality monitoring station at the fenceline of the fertilizer plant. The province's air quality guidelines are different from the facility's permitted emissions limits, which have not been violated over the course of the report's time frame. The guideline numbers are an indication of the level of emissions Environment Alberta regards as desirable and are generally lower than the maximum levels the facility may have been allowed to emit when the plant was first built. Agrium submitted an emission reduction plan to the province in April 2010 and intends to implement the first phase of the program during a maintenance shutdown scheduled for 2012.

MTPD - Metric Tonne per Day STPD - Short Ton per Day
MTPA - Metric Tonne per Annum STPA - Short Ton per Annum
SA - Single Absorption
DA - Double Absorption

* Coordinates can be used to locate plant on Google Earth


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