Low natural gas prices in the United States combined with increased demand for urea and ammonia are driving the construction of new fertilizer plant projects in the U.S. and across the globe. In short, companies are seeking to monetize low cost natural gas by turning it into more valuable products, such as ammonia and urea.
“New fertilizer capacity addition in the U.S. is about 14 percent of the planned worldwide growth, with several world-scale U.S. projects starting up in 2016,” said George Gruber, Black & Veatch Technology Manager for Syngas Production and Conversion. “Recent increased demand for fertilizer products has meant significant growth of our business in this area.”
He said the new output would impact the import/export market.
“Low U.S. natural gas prices will continue to drive U.S. conversion projects to higher value products such as fertilizer,” Gruber said. “We should see the U.S. transition from a fertilizer importer to an exporter in the coming years.”
Demand from SCR Technology
Through a sophisticated chemical process, natural gas can be transformed into ammonia, which is used to create urea. Urea is used as a fertilizer, as well as to make plywood and specialty chemicals. Additionally, urea is increasingly being used to reduce the pollutant nitrogen oxide (NOx) using selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technology.
In order to meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) diesel engine emissions regulations, all new U.S. diesel engines will have SCRs, Gruber said. The requirement is already in place for heavy duty over-the-road vehicles, became effective in 2014 for off-highway vehicles, and will become effective in 2015 for railroad engines and in 2016 for marine engines.
Additionally, the improved fuel efficiency will encourage light truck and car manufacturers to add SCR to their diesel engines to meet the federal fuel economy regulations. A global market forecast by CF Industries projects urea-based SCR usage to grow from 1.25 trillion gallons in 2014 to more than 3 trillion gallons in 2020.
Gruber said that low natural gas prices in Trinidad and high natural gas prices in the U.S. led to the shutdown of most of the U.S. ammonia production capacity during the past 20 years. But in 2012, shale gas production surged and the large new supply of natural gas lowered the spot market price to $2.50/million BTU. At the same time, ammonia and urea prices rose due to increased demand and reduced supply from Algeria, Libya and Trinidad, major exporters. In fact, Trinidad natural gas prices are currently higher than U.S. prices.
“These strong economic drivers all combined to motivate the development of new U.S. fertilizer plant projects,” Gruber said.
Plant Revamps Are Active
Black & Veatch recently performed engineering for the PCS ammonia plant revamp in Georgia, as well as engineering and procurement for the Rentech ammonia plant revamp project in Illinois. Current projects include engineering and procurement for the PCS ammonia plant revamp in Ohio and revamp of two Koch ammonia plants at Enid, Oklahoma. Black & Veatch is performing feasibility studies for several additional ammonia plant revamps to increase capacity.
According to the International Fertilizer Industry Association (IFA) 2014-2018 Outlook, almost 200 expansion projects are expected to come on line in the next five years across the globe. World capacity of fertilizer products and raw materials would increase by 146 million tonnes, or 18 percent, over 2013. These developments equate to a total investment of $110 billion, IFA said.
“The expertise needed for ammonia projects applies to other syngas processes, including production of diesel, jet fuel, gasoline, methanol, and high quality base oils for lubricants,” said Michael Goff, Black & Veatch Process Engineer and a synfuels expert. “In addition to natural gas reforming, syngas can also be produced by gasifying feedstocks – such as biomass, municipal solid waste, coal, coke and heavy oils. Black & Veatch is actively implementing technology to create these high-value products from syngas produced from low-cost feedstocks.”
