Sulphuric Acid -
NEWS
Updated March 29, 2018
2018
Topsoe’s sustainable SNOX™ emissions control
technology enters the carbon black industry
Two Andhra Pradesh
port towns in race for HZL smelter
Fluor awarded FEED contract for Egyptian
phosphoric acid production facility
DuPont increases
catalyst prices
World’s largest wet
gas sulfuric acid plant officially starts up
New Projects Boost
Iran's Copper Sector
Outotec to deliver modular sulfuric acid
plants for Shalina Resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Rio Tinto lifts force majeure on copper, acid
from U.S. mine
Smelting company Nyrstar has opened its upgraded facility at Port Pirie,
north of Adelaide
Noranda Income Fund Provides an Update on
Production
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Topsoe’s
sustainable SNOX™ emissions control technology enters the carbon
black industry
April 12, 2018 -
Orion Engineered Carbons LLC has signed a contract for
Topsoe’s sustainable flue gas cleaning technology, SNOX™.
The contract has a value of a three digit million DKK amount.The
solution will remove SOx, NOx and dust particles from tail gases at
Orion’s carbon black plant in Ivanhoe, Louisiana, USA.
It is the first time that SNOX™ is applied in the carbon black
industry.
Since 2014, Orion has conducted in-depth analyses of the SNOX™
process, including investigative site visits to existing Topsoe
plants and testing the concept at one of Orion’s manufacturing
facilities. In particular, Orion was convinced by the second-to-none
sustainability profile of SNOX™, which does not consume any
reagents, apart from ammonia for the NOx reduction, and does not
consume any water. Other factors that played a major role in their
selection were the highest available energy efficiency and the very
low emissions level that meets the stringent environmental
regulations. The agreement with Orion includes
engineering, license, proprietary equipment, spare parts, catalyst,
and future supervision tasks during commissioning and start-up, as
well as service obligations during commercial operation. The SNOX™
plant is scheduled to be in full commercial operation by April 2021.The
SNOX™ process removes sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and
particulates from flue gases. The sulfur is recovered as sellable
sulfuric acid and the nitrogen oxides are reduced to harmless free
nitrogen. The process is based on catalytic reactions and does not
consume water or absorbents. Neither does it produce any waste. The
heat generated in the process can be reused to preheat air in
Orion’s process which improves overall efficiency and economics
considerably.
Two Andhra Pradesh port towns in
race for HZL smelter
March 29, 2018 - The port towns of Kakinada in East
Godavari and Krishnapatnamin Nellore district are in the reckoning
by the Vedanta group to set up a zinc smelter. The smelter will be
set up by Hindustan Zinc Ltd, the flagship of the Vedanta group in
India, and the project was announced during the CII Partnership in
Visakhapatnam last month. According to J. Krishna Kishore,
chief executive officer of Andhra Pradesh Economic Development Board
(APEDB), HZL had sought 1200 acres of land for setting up the
smelter. “The company indicated that it wanted the land in port
towns, so the board showed Vedanta officials several large parcels
of land in Kakinada and Krishnapatnam,” he said. Asked when he
expected to hear about which town Vedanta would be setting up the
smelter, Krishna Kishore said the potential of the two towns is
stated to be under consideration by the board of HZ, and that a
decision is expected “shortly”. The Anil Agarwal-owned Vedanta
Ltd has a 64.92% stake in HZL, while the central government owns a
29.59% stake, and the balance is held by mutual funds, financial
institutions and individual shareholders as of 31 December 2017, as
per the company’s filing with the bourses on its shareholding
pattern. Krishna Kishore said that HZL is expected to invest
Rs. 3000 crore in the first phase of the smelter, with another Rs.
3000 crore in the proposed second phase. “Apart from the zinc
smelter, HZL is also planning to set up a fertilizer plant to make
use of the sulphuric acid generated by the zinc smelting process.
The fertilizer plant could be outsourced to a third party by HZL,
but that is something HZL will take a call on when the smelter is
commissioned,” he said. The current plan by Vedanta to set up
a zinc smelter is the second attempt by the non-ferrous conglomerate
to make a success of such a manufacturing unit in Andhra Pradesh.
Its first attempt ended in the closure of the existing zinc smelter
in Visakhapatnam in 2012. The Visakhapatnam zinc smelter began
commercial operations in 1977, and it produced both zinc and lead,
and silver as a byproduct. While HZL shut down its lead plant in
Visakhapatnam in the mid-nineties—long before Vedanta acquired a
majority stake in the company from the government—following
complaints by residents of villages adjoining the smelter that the
lead residue was leaching into their groundwater sources, the
company shut down its zinc smelter in 2012 with HZL and Vedanta
claiming that it had become unviable to run the plant by
transporting zinc concentrate from its mines in Rajasthan and
elsewhere. Over 300 executives and workers were let go off when the
Vizag smelter was shut down. Last year, HZL hired a consultant
to find a buyer for the 342 acres of land on which the smelter is
located, but the move was moved into cold storage after labour
unions in Vizag raised concerns over HZL’s plans to book windfall
profits from the sale of the land, which is in the Gajuwaka
neighborhood. The 342-acre HZL land is estimated to cost nearly Rs.
5000 crore. Vedanta now plans to convert the land into a “city
centre project”, as announced by the company during the partnership
summit last month, and confirmed to ToI by HZL spokesman Pavan
Kaushik earlier this month. Krishna Kishore said that HZL’s
new smelter in Andhra Pradesh would be using imported zinc
concentrate, which had made it imperative for the Vedanta group to
locate the plant in a port town.
Fluor awarded FEED contract
for Egyptian phosphoric acid production facility
March 27, 2018 - Fluor Corp. has announced that it has been
awarded the front-end engineering design (FEED) contract by
Enppi – Egypt’s state energy firm – for the offsites and
utilities section of the main plant complex and support services
for the Waphco phosphoric acid production plant at Abu Tartour,
New Valley province, Egypt.
The President of Fluor’s Mining & Metals
business, Tony Morgan, said: “Fluor appreciates the importance and
relevance to Egypt of this major industrial project and will use its
experienced resources and subject matter expertise to deliver this
complex engineering project to meet our client’s goals.“Our integrated
project team is one of the most experienced in the mining and
fertilizers industry with the resources, expertise and knowledge to meet
the cost, safety and fast-track schedule needs of our client.”Fluor will
work with Enppi as an integrated team. It will fast-track the FEED for
the plant, which will utilise resources from the Abu Tartour mine to
produce merchant-grade phosphoric acid. The project scope includes all
process facilities. These include a sulfuric acid plant, utilities with
a cogeneration system, storage and other required units. Once the
facility is completed, it will produce 500 000 metric tpy of wet process
phosphoric acid.
DuPont increases catalyst prices
March 7, 2018 - DuPont Clean Technologies
(DuPont) has announced a general global price increase of US$0.50/l for
its MECS® sulfuric
acid catalyst products. Subject to the terms of applicable contracts,
the new pricing will take effect immediately. Our world-leading,
high-quality catalyst enables customers to achieve high yield sulfuric
acid production with maximum efficiency and reliability,” said Cristina
Kulczycki, global product manager, Acid Catalysts. “Our focus continues
to be on supporting members of the sulfuric acid industry with new
products, technologies and services that allow them to be more agile,
flexible and competitive.”
World’s largest wet gas sulfuric acid
plant officially starts up
February 19, 2018 - Bestgrand Chemical Group has announced the
successful startup of its wet gas sulfuric acid (WSA) plant.
The plant has a production capacity of 300 000
tpy of sulfuric acid, and is the world’s largest such facility. It will
treat 131 000 t of acid gas over-the-fence per year from the
neighbouring world scale refinery plant operated by a joint venture (JV)
between China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) and Shell in Huizhou
City, China.Bestgrand Chemical Group claims that it focused on the
environmental benefits from using WSA to capture gaseous sulfur and
convert it into commercial grade sulfuric acid. It has also been a
deciding factor that both the energy efficiency and the heat recovery of
the process are very high. The company predicts that it will decrease CO2 emissions
by 220 000 tpy and SO2 emissions
to a level that is 50% lower than that required by the sulfuric acid
industry.Frank Lei, Senior Sales Director, Topsoe in China, said:
“Haldor Topsoe is proud to be awarded the license, engineering design,
tech service, and hardware and catalyst contract for the world’s largest
WSA plant by Bestgrand Chemical Group. The successful startup is a
milestone for the WSA technology both in China and globally, and it
proves that this technology has an important role to play in reducing
harmful sulfur emissions in a commercially sound way.”Since 2000, Topsoe
has sold a total of 68 WSA plants in China. 54 of these are now on
stream, with the remaining 14 under construction.
New Projects Boost Iran's Copper Sector
February 5, 2018 - Thirteen expansion
projects of Kerman Province’s National Iranian Copper Industries Company
were inaugurated late Thursday by President Hassan Rouhani and Minister
of Industries, Mining and Trade Mohammad Shariatmadari. The total
value of the projects exceeded 35 trillion rials ($760.8 million), the
Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development and Renovation
Organization announced. NICICO is the leading copper producer in
the Middle East and North Africa region, as the mines it operates hold
close to 14% share of Asia’s copper deposits and about 3% of global
reserves. Iran holds about 4 billion tons of estimated copper
reserves, according to Geological Survey of Iran. The new
production projects include a flash smelter with a capacity of 282,000
tons of copper anode per year alongside the purchase of casting wheels
and anode furnaces with an investment of 2.4 trillion rials ($51.6
million) in addition to €182 million; Khatunabad Copper Smelter with an
annual capacity of 200,000 tons of copper cathode and an investment of
640 billion rials ($13.7 million) in addition to €143 million;
Sarcheshmeh copper plant’s new convertor furnaces’ gas discharge system
with 1.54 trillion rials ($33 million) in addition to the investment of
€19 million; Sarcheshmeh cathode washing system with 1 trillion rials
($21 million) of investment; Sarcheshmeh’s explosive material production
plant with a capacity of 12,000 tons of gelatin dynamites per year with
120 billion rials ($2.5 million) of investment; and expansion of
Sarcheshmeh’s sulfuric acid plant capacity to 300,000 tons per year with
580 billion rials of investment in addition to €3 million. The new
infrastructure projects comprised the second line of the 80-kilometer
Sarcheshmeh-Shahr-e-Babak Road with an 800-billion-rial ($17 million)
investment; the first and second phase of Sirjan’s 500-megawatt combined
cycle power plant with an investment of 700 billion rials ($15 million)
in addition to €285 million; Khatunabad’s new copper concentrate storage
with a 60,000-ton capacity and a molybdenum dewatering, drying and
drum-filling plant, with a combined investment of 790 billion rials ($17
million); increasing the capacity of quicklime storage by 1,250 tons
with an investment of 110 billion rials ($2.3 million);
Meymand-Shahr-e-Babak electricity substation with 50 billion rials ($1
million), in addition to an investment of €15 million; and nine
electricity substations to feed flash smelters, acid sulfuric and
molybdenum plants with 480 billion rials ($10 million) of investment,
according to NIOC's website. The company, however, stopped short
of saying whether the projects' "inauguration" meant that they have
become operational or simply that work has just begun on them.
Giant Holding
NICICO operates the world’s second largest and the Middle East’s largest
open-pit copper mine, Sarcheshmeh. The mine is home to over 826 million
tons of proven and 1.2 billion tons of estimated copper reserves,
alongside substantial amounts of minerals such as molybdenum, gold and
rare metals. NICICO's other mines include Sungun Copper Mine in
northwestern Iran, Taft, Miduk, Chahmesi and Chahfiroozeh mines in
central Iran, Daraloo Mine in the south and Chehelkoureh Mine in
southeast. Its plants in Kerman Province include
Sarcheshmeh and Miduk concentration plants with 800,000 tons/year
capacity, Sarcheshmeh Molybdenum plant with 7,000 tons/year, Sarcheshmeh
and Miduk SX-EW plants with 13,000 tons/year capacity, Sarcheshmeh and
Khatoon Abad smelter plants with 250,000 tons/year capacity, Sarcheshmeh
Sulfuric Acid Plant with 100,000 tons/year capacity, Sarcheshmeh
Refinery Plant with 240,000 tons/year capacity, Khatoon Abad Refinery
Plant with 200,000 tons/year capacity and Sarcheshmeh wire rod, slab and
billet casting plants with 180,000 tons/year capacity.
Stability in Global Prices
Capacity expansions at NICICO have come at a good time, as global copper
prices are holding their own in 2018. After a series of plunges in
late 2017, copper spent most of December growing rapidly to distance
itself from its $6,500 lows and jump above $7,000 in January 2018.
Prices have taken a beating since the year began, dropping from a high
of $7,202 to just above $6,900, but February showings have been strong
and it’s now again above $7,100, London Metal Exchange reported.
NICICO’s experience with the historic lows of 2015 has made it more
resilient and also adaptive. According to the head of IMIDRO,
Mehdi Karbasian, NICICO has reduced its copper concentrate finished
price from 35,510 rials (76 cents) per kilogram to 24,400 (52 cents) and
cathode prices from 51,980 rials ($1.1) to 39,000 rials (83 cents) in
the past four years. The cost-cutting enabled the company to
survive the low prices and now with the markets improving, it is poised
to increase NICICO’s competitiveness. NICICO’s shares are
currently being traded at 2,633 rials each on Tehran Stock Exchange with
a market capitalization of $3.47 billion. The company is a
semi-privatized entity, as a large number of state-owned firms or other
semi-privatized companies own its shares. Its largest shareholder, for
instance, is the vast mining governmental holding IMIDRO with a 12%
share. Bank Mellat, Metal and Mines Development Investment Company
are the two other, each owning about 5.7%.
Outotec to deliver modular sulfuric
acid plants for Shalina Resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo
January 29, 2018 - Outotec to deliver modular
sulfuric acid plants for Shalina Resources in the Democratic Republic of
Congo Outotec has been awarded a contract by Shalina Resources Limited
for the delivery of advanced sulfuric acid plant technology to the
Mutoshi project near Kolwezi in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The
order value, approximately EUR 33 million, is booked in Outotec's 2018
first quarter order intake. Outotec's scope includes the delivery of
three skid mounted, modular sulfuric acid plants that will produce the
acid and SO(2) gas required in the process of the new Mutoshi
copper-cobalt plant. The innovative plant concept, based on Outotec's
technology and expertise gained from 650 plants delivered globally,
ensures the many benefits of modular prefabricated plant delivery, such
as low investment, installation and operation cost, increased
availability and maintainability as well as environmentally sound and
safe operation. The order complements the EUR 65 million copper and
cobalt processing technology delivery to the Mutoshi project Outotec
announced on December 14, 2017. "We really look forward to working with
Shalina Resources in the Mutoshi project, and are extremely pleased that
we can complete our diverse technology package for the copper and cobalt
processing now with sulfuric acid plants. These modular plants represent
our latest technology, and remarkably improve the environmental
performance of the plant", says Kalle Härkki, head of Outotec's Metals,
Energy & Water business.
Rio Tinto lifts force majeure on
copper, acid from U.S. mine
January 26, 2018 - Rio Tinto lifted force majeure on Jan. 1 for
shipments of refined copper and acid from its Kennecott mine in the
United States, 79 days after declaring it could not meet customer
commitments, a spokesman said on Friday. The global miner declared
force majeure October 13, after halting production of refined copper at
its Utah mine smelter following the death of a worker exposed to sulfur
dioxide gases at the plant. It restarted the smelter November 17.
“It’s business as usual,” said spokesman Kyle Bennett. In the
fourth quarter, refined copper production at Kennecott declined 67
percent compared with the same period in the previous year, to 22,100
tonnes from 67,000 tonnes, Rio said in an operations report last week.
The smelter was expected to draw down an increased concentrate inventory
during the first half of 2018, Rio said. In 2017, Kennecott
produced 125,800 tonnes of refined copper, down some 20 percent from
2016.
Smelting company Nyrstar has opened its upgraded facility at Port Pirie,
north of Adelaide
January 22,
2017 - Smelting group Nyrstar has opened its upgraded metals
processing plant at Port Pirie, north of Adelaide, after a $600 million
investment to cut pollution and ensure its long-term viability.Premier Jay
Weatherill says the upgraded plant has secured 730 ongoing jobs and will
allow the company to significantly reduce emissions."For Nyrstar, improved
efficiencies provide a pathway to uplift earnings and for Port Pirie we can
lock in better health and environment outcomes for decades to come," Mr
Weatherill said as he visited the plant on Monday.Nyrstar chairman Martyn
Konig said the smelter had played a strong role in the changing face of Port
Pirie for more than 127 years."Nyrstar is proud and committed to continue to
be a fundamentally important part of the economic and social landscape in
Port Pirie," he said.Mr Konig said Nyrstar also valued a commitment to
sustainability and one of the most important reasons for the redevelopment
was the significant environmental benefits it promised to deliver.That
included moving to a completely enclosed furnace design to capture dust and
sulphur dioxide emissions which would result in a markedly improved
environmental footprint, he said.SA Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis said the
Nyrstar development had also provided up to 600 jobs during the construction
phase and local companies were awarded contracts worth about $90
million."But just as importantly, securing the future for Port Pirie has
encouraged other businesses to invest in new developments due to the
certainty we have created," he said.Mr Weatherill said without the
redevelopment, the closure of the Port Pirie facility had been a
possibility.'That would have been catastrophic on a number of levels,
environmentally, socially but of course economically for this region," he
said.The premier said the government had two key goals in supporting the
project, protecting the health of the local community and protecting local
jobs.
Noranda Income Fund Provides an Update
on Production
January 19, 2018 - Noranda Income Fund (TSX:NIF.UN) (the
“Fund”) provides an update to the market on the work towards returning
to normal operating capacity following the ratification of the new
collective agreement on December 1, 2017.All active unionized employees
returned to work at the processing facility in December 2017. As of the
end of December, all equipment that had been idled since February 2017
has been restarted. By the end of January 2018, the Fund’s Manager
expects to have completed the ramp up of the processing facility’s
operation to normal operating capacity.Once the processing facility has
achieved its normal operating rate, and assuming full supply of zinc
concentrate, the Fund should be able to produce between 250,000 and
260,000 tonnes of zinc from the treatment of concentrate feeds as well
as processing the 20,000 tonnes of Glencore Canada-owned cathode in
2018. As disclosed in November 2017, the Fund sold 20,000 tonnes of zinc
cathode to Glencore Canada. It is expected that this material will be
tolled by the processing facility. In exchange, the Fund will receive a
tolling fee.The Fund, through its Independent Committee and their
advisors, is currently negotiating with Glencore Canada and anticipates
reaching a satisfactory agreement regarding the supply of zinc
concentrate following the end of the current concentrate agreement on
April 30, 2018.
