AUM complex: advanced gas chemistry technologies
The technologies used at Metafrax Chemicals, unique for the gas chemical industry, were presented at the conference "Leaders of Russia and CIS countries: Gas and Chemistry 2024" by the Technical Director of the company Andrei Eremeev. The event took place at the end of February 2024 in Moscow.
The report "Processing of purge gas of methanol production at a power swing adsorption plant (PSA) with the subsequent use of product hydrogen for ammonia production” was devoted to the “Ammonia. Urea. Melamine" complex of JSC "Metafrax Chemicals", commissioned in June 2023. We remind that thanks to the creation of the AUM complex in Gubakha, 400 new highly qualified jobs were created.
The Technical Director of Metafrax spoke about the unique ammonia production scheme at the enterprise. In particular, the main raw material for the production of ammonia is the purge gas of methanol production. The PSA plant is the first node in the ammonia production process chain. To purify the purge gas from impurities, 10 adsorbers are used at the plant, in which 4 layers of adsorbent are loaded. With the help of valve blocks, they work alternately. For selective absorption of impurities contained in the purge gas, various types of adsorbent are used, for example, activated carbon, zeolites, silica gel and other substances. By the way, there are only 4 such PSA plants worldwide, operating at a pressure of over 6.3 Mpa.
The presentation of Metafrax representative aroused considerable interest among specialists of the gas chemical industry. During the discussion, the specifics of the operation of the PSA plant working at high pressure were announced and the experience of Metafrax Chemicals specialists obtained during the operation of such a plant was analyzed in detail.
"Among the advantages of the ammonia production technology used at the AUM complex is energy efficiency, since the energy consumption for the production of one ton of ammonia according to the accepted scheme is 5.8 Gcal/t, against 7.6 Gcal/t in the classical scheme. The second positive point is the relatively low capital investments for the construction of an ammonia plant, since there is no unit for desulfurization, primary and secondary reforming, medium temperature conversion, low temperature conversion, methyl diethanolamine, and methanation. At the same time, the resulting ammonia is widely used at the enterprise for the production of next-stage products," Andrei Eremeev emphasized.