Minimum scale for urea

It’s hard to say what the minimum scale is, but **it seems to be limited to the range of 18–30; applications below that level won’t be approved. I believe the current scale is constrained by manufacturing processes and equipment production. Therefore, new projects with a scale of 30–50 are more likely to be approved, as larger scales may make it difficult to handle the costs associated with equipment manufacturing and loan interest.

It is understood that **there seems to be no clear restrictions on the scale of urea production at present. However, the larger the scale, the better the economies of scale. Given the current level of technological development in China, new urea plants must have an annual production capacity of at least 300,000 tons; basically, there are no new projects with a capacity of less than 300,000 tons. Of course, the scale should not be too large either; otherwise, many devices will need to be imported, resulting in high investment costs. At present, domestic production of 520,000 tons per year has been achieved through local manufacturing; for larger scales, reliance on imported technologies or equipment is necessary.

I recall that in the late 1980s, there were small urea production plants in China with a capacity of 120 tons per day; they operated quite well. Later, expansions and upgrades were carried out on these plants, and it seems these were the smallest such facilities available at that time. Nowadays, plants are being built with larger capacities. In terms of gasification furnaces, it’s common for a single furnace to have the ability to produce 1,200–1,400 tons of ammonia per day from coal gas, while the urea production capacity can exceed 2,000 tons per day. Domestic-made equipment can achieve a urea production capacity of 2,200–2,300 tons per day. It’s still the traditional CO2 stripping process that is used; pool-type condensers have not yet been developed. A higher production capacity certainly leads to better economic benefits and greater resilience against risks, though the initial investment is high—just the urea production line alone can cost hundreds of millions of yuan.

The last edit to this post was made by qiwu9981 on 2009-11-22 at 14:44. As far as I know, the minimum output for synthetic ammonia production is 60,000 tons. Currently, due to overcapacity in traditional coal-based chemical industries, the development and construction of small chemical enterprises that have high energy consumption and cause severe pollution are being restricted; synthetic ammonia projects with a capacity of 180,000–300,000 tons are also subject to restrictions. Projects for methanol production with a capacity of less than 1 million tons will not be approved for three years. The larger the scale, the lower the costs, and the greater the market competitiveness; energy-saving and environmental protection projects are more favored, representing the goal for long-term development.

The larger the scale, the better the benefits. Our company’s new projects involve 300,000 tons of ammonia and 520,000 tons of urea – two sets in total. We have also explored larger-scale projects, but due to funding constraints and unknown risks in the future, we had to give up on them. In today’s society, only a few state-owned enterprises are able to undertake and dare to pursue large-scale projects; even if they suffer losses, there is still someone who will take care of things

5# wlq1970 still has 40,000 tons/year

5# wlq1970 also has 40,000 tons/year of synthetic ammonia production capacity

This post was last edited by Xieshui on 2009-11-22 at 20:07. Yes, there are even smaller ones. It is understood that in the 1960s and 1970s, the production capacity for synthetic ammonia was between 0.3 thousand tons per year and 0.4 thousand tons per year, and this ammonia was used to produce ammonium carbonate. There were 1,459 production lines across the country, almost one in each county, which helped to solve the food shortage problem. At the end of the 1960s, the first aqueous urea production line was built in Huzhou, Sichuan, with a production capacity of 9 thousand tons per year. Times have changed; what was possible back then cannot be compared to what is possible today – today’s ammonia production in just two days equals the annual production volume from those days.

Initially, the amount of small nitrogen fertilizers to be converted into urea seemed to be 40,000 tons; later it increased from 40,000 to 60,000 tons, until the annual production of ammonia reached 150,000–200,000 tons. However, the production capacity for small nitrogen fertilizers usually does not rely on just one ammonia synthesis tower, but rather on 2–3 such towers (of various types such as 600, 800, 1000, and 1000-type towers), along with 2–3 urea production towers (of various capacities such as 17 cubic meters, 20 cubic meters, 31 cubic meters, 35 cubic meters, and 41 cubic meters). Therefore, making such conversions is not easy; it’s better to install larger facilities and shut down the existing ones at an appropriate time. We are also preparing to install two sets of 30-52 units that use pressurized gasification. If there hadn’t been an economic crisis, the installation of the equipment would likely have already begun by now; but all that can be seen at the moment is land and blueprints – there’s nothing else to do.

This post was last edited by Xieshui on 2009-11-22 at 20:19. Sea friends, with so many tanks and containers, what is the total production capacity? It’s very difficult to reduce consumption.