Reduction of CO2 emissions and fine water purification

"Metafrax Group" presented the AUM complex project at the XIV "Mineral Fertilizers" conference.

The annual conference was the first event of the VII Perm Engineering and Industrial Forum, which opened on December 1st, 2022 at the capital of the Kama region. According to the organizers, the forum is attended by more than three thousand top managers and specialists of large industrial enterprises of Russia as well as representatives of federal and regional authorities, financial structures, scientists, investors, Russian and foreign experts.

"Metafrax Group" was represented at the "Mineral Fertilizers" conference by Armen Garslyan, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of "Metafrax Chemicals" JSC, Nikolay Ilyukhin, the General Director of "Metafrax" Engineering and Technology Center" LLC, and Levon Garslyan, the Director for Strategic Development and Investment Project Evaluation. Aleksandr Vdovin, the Technical Director of the company, made a report on the uniqueness of the "Ammonia-Urea-Melamine" (AUM) project, which is being implemented at the production site of "Metafrax Chemicals".

Aleksandr Vdovin informed that the project implementation had been started in 2017, and the completion and start-up of the facility will take place in 2023. As a result, a process interconnected complex for the production of ammonia, urea and melamine will be created at "Metafrax" with a design capacity of 500 thousand tons per year for urea, 298 thousand tons per year for ammonia and 40 thousand tons for melamine. The project is in the final stage of implementation. The ammonia and urea units are currently in the commissioning mode. The start-up of the melamine plant and the entire complex will take place in 2023.

The Technical Director focused on the uniqueness of the project and its environmental component. In particular, the new production differs from the classical ammonia synthesis circuit in that it operates on pure gases, there is no steam reforming. The plant operates on pure hydrogen and pure nitrogen.

- We take nitrogen at the air separation plant and supply hydrogen through integration with the methanol production and use the purge gas of methanol synthesis as a source. As for production of carbon dioxide for the urea synthesis - the technology of CO2 recovery from the flue gases of methanol production is implemented here. Today, 50% of the flue gas generated at the methanol production are used to recover carbon dioxide and direct it to the urea synthesis, - explained Aleksandr Vdovin.

Therefore, a significant environmental effect is achieved: direct carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere are reduced by half due to the creation of the CO2 recovery unit.

The urea unit is presented as an integration of the prilled urea production and a process chain interconnected with the melamine production. At the same time, the off gases of melamine production are returned to the urea plant. 1672 tons of urea melt are obtained per day and part of it is used for the production of melamine - 120 tons per day.

In addition, the AUM complex has new treatment plants in its composition so that the effluents generated by the production do not load the treatment plants operating at the enterprise.

- As of today, the biological effluent treatment allows us to additionally process and purify 6333 cubic meters of effluents with a degree of purification of 99%, - highlighted Aleksandr Vdovin.