Case study

Turnkey Emission monitoring solutions for Azomures fertilizer plant

Fertilizer production plant | MIR 9000e & MIR 9000H

Part of the Swiss Group Ameropa and located in Transylvania, Azomures is the largest fertilizer production plant in Romania, which are used around the world in the agriculture, for the cultivation of crops to feed people and animals. The Azomures plant produces approximately 1.6 MMT of fertilizers per year.

“The invention of the chemical process to produce nitrogen fertilizers from natural gas and air spurred a massive increase in agricultural productivity, and enabled the feeding of today’s global population. Our industry’s task is to optimize the contribution of fertilizers to the improvement of yield, quality, soil conservation, farming income and food security, while minimizing the negative impact on the environment.- Fertilizers – Ameropa

In Azomures, we are committed to respecting and promoting the best practices in the field of fertilizers manufacturing, in order to provide the community with optimal conditions for coexistence with an industrial platform. We are aware of our responsibility towards the environment and that is why we have invested significant amounts of money in the refurbishment and modernization of key equipment on the platform. Thus, we managed to reduce the footprint on the environment, under conditions of transparency towards the community. – Environment – AZOMURES“

Starting 2014 AZOMURES has launched an extensive modernization program to improve their energy efficiency and environmental impact: reducing the consumption of methane gas (fossil fuel) in ammonia production plants and reducing CO₂, NOx and NH₃ emissions in the air.

About the project

The specifications issued by the client called for replacement of some 12-14 years old systems, also supplied by ENVEA (ENVIRONNEMENT S.A.), for the measurement of NOx emissions upstream and downstream of the DeNOx installations of the 3 nitric acid plants. Subsequently, N₂O measurement has been added separately, as part of GHG parameters required to obtain green certificates.

The use of QAL1 certified equipment was mandatory as well as regulatory compliance to 96/61/EC (IPPC Directive) – Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control – IPPC Reference Document on Best Available Techniques for Manufacture of Large Volume Inorganic Chemicals – Ammonia, Acids and Fertilisers

Solution

The modernization works have been done in 3 main steps, one for each Nitric Acid Ammonia plant, and phased over several years: in 2015 – Acid Nitric II, in 2020 – Acid Nitric IV, in 2021 – 2022 – Acid Nitric III). After winning the tenders for the Nitric Acid II and IV plants, and the successful use of the provided equipment’s ever since, ENVEA won the tender for the 3rd and last Nitric Acid plant.

ENVEA and its local distributor RSI Electro have designed a turnkey solution, based on the MIR 9000H – a Heated Multi-Gas NDIR-GFC analyzer perfectly adapted for wet sample gases in corrosive applications such as DeNOx (SCR / SNCR) as well as the MIR 9000e – a new generation of NDIR-GFC Multi-Gas Analyzers offering multi-gas measurement of the N₂O (required for this application) but also NOx, SO₂, CO, O₂, residual H₂O, CO₂ and CH₄.

The solution provided meets and exceeds the requirements, as it include a series of automatic safety and protection features for the pollutants measuring systems. Indeed, during plant start-up, shutdown or maintenance operations, excessive NOx concentrations might occur and can endanger the analytical equipment.

With a long expertise in automation and turnkey design, RSI Electro has taken on the challenge, and has designed an automatic system to protect the NOx & NH₃ heated analyzer (MIR 9000H) as well as the N₂O analyzer (MIR 9000e) by halting the sampling when the concentration rises above a certain limit and flushing the measuring chamber with instrument air. The system automatically returns to the MEASURE function when the concentration level drops.

Main challenge: to design a reliable automation solution that fully meets the customer specifications and a high-quality turnkey integration.