If ammonia is the first step to make any N-based fertilizers, then urea is certainly the most important of them. It is the one with the highest nitrogen content, by weight, and it is an essential growth factor for many plants. It requires only ammonia and CO2 (also a byproduct of ammonia production) as feedstocks and therefore ammonia and urea plants are often combined.
Urea has found also other applications, besides in farming. For instance, it can be turned into high-end plastic materials via the production of melamine and as such it represents an interesting way to diversify the product mix of a fertilizer plant.
The early urea industrial processes, requiring the recycle of all the unconverted reactants, have practically all been abandoned in favour of modern schemes where only the unreacted CO2 and ammonia are kicked back, with the aid of either the feed ammonia or feed CO2, making the whole process a lot more efficient.
Casale has a long term and deep experience with both kind of plants (i.e. ammonia-stripping and CO2 stripping) and can propose many technologies, solutions or specialized services for revamping any kind of plant, whether the goal is moderate or very large capacity increase or energy saving or environmental impact mitigation or just improving the reliability of the critical equipment.
Efficient processes for new urea plants are also available which, in combination with our capacity as also ammonia licensors, can be easily realized with a high degree of integration, for the benefit of our customers.
If you want to know how you can make your urea production more profitable or diversify adding a high- value melamine plant, please continue exploring this website or get in touch with our experts.