The world’s largest single-unit urea plant is set to begin trial operations

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Recently, a safety review was conducted prior to the trial production of the project operated by Ulan Tai’an Energy and Chemical Co., Ltd. in Xingan League, which has an annual production capacity of 1.35 million tons of synthetic ammonia and 2.4 million tons of urea; detailed examinations were also carried out on various aspects related to the system integration, as well as many other details before the project went into operation. The project of Ulan Tai’an Energy and Chemical Co., Ltd. in Xingan League, which aims to produce 1.35 million tons of synthetic ammonia and 2.4 million tons of urea per year, requires a total investment of 10.56 billion yuan; to date, about 9.3 billion yuan has been invested in this project. Leveraging the region’s abundant high-quality coal resources, the project involves the in-situ deep processing of local raw coal to produce high-quality fertilizers. This approach not only facilitates industrial optimization but also provides strong support for the development of the agricultural industry in Xingan League, while simultaneously ensuring economic benefits for enterprises. The air separation unit of the project adopts a dual-pump internal compression cryogenic process ； The thermoelectric plant uses 4 units of 410 t circulating fluidized bed boilers ； The gasification unit uses a Tsinghua furnace, employing water-cooled wall gasification technology for coal water slurry ； The purification technology uses low-temperature methanol washing and liquid nitrogen washing for gas purification ； The ammonia synthesis technology uses the Topsoe process from Denmark ； The urea production technology utilizes the Snam ammonia-based urea synthesis process from Italy. Among them, for the first production line with an annual output of 750,000 tons of synthetic ammonia and 1.3 million tons of urea, all the main equipment has been installed; the subsystems were handed over for commissioning in late September 2021. At present, the first production line is in the stage of pre-production testing as well as addressing the safety review issues related to the system before starting operations. The first production line is scheduled to complete tasks such as airtightness testing of the subsequent process systems, instrument calibration, and joint commissioning by the end of November 2021, so as to meet the conditions for starting trial production. Production testing with material feeding began in early December.