Report 11th Stamicarbon Urea Symposium - May, 2008

The 11th Stamicarbon Urea Symposium took place from May 19 till May 22, 2008 in the Hotels van Oranje in Noordwijk, The Netherlands.

Success
The urea symposium was open to all Stamicarbon licensees, licensed contractors and Stamicarbon preferred equipment suppliers in the urea industry.
The main goal of the symposium is supplying a meeting platform for the Stamicarbon Urea community in order to share innovations, state-of-the art technology and experiences for the benefit of all participants. Besides the Stamicarbon staff, the symposium draw a record number of 241 participants, from 35 different countries. With this great number of participants, the introduction of the new AVANCORE^® concept and many other interesting topics presented, made this symposium an enormous success.

Topics
The main topics of this symposium were:
- Experiences and innovations in the Stamicarbon Granulation Technology
- Review of the achievements, availability and benefits of the construction material Safurex^®
- AVANCORE^®, The Stamicarbon New Plant concept for future plants
- The step towards zero oxygen
- Plant safety and risk reduction
- Revamp cases and experiences
- Closed loop urea and bio fuels production
- Rotoform urea pastilles, a new shaping and finishing technology
- World urea production trends and market expectations

Besides the Stamicarbon personnel many presentations were given by customers, contractors, suppliers and consultants. Stamicarbon thanks all participants for their contributions.

Round Table Discussions
The Round Table Discussions again turned out to be a good medium to actively participate in the symposium by having discussions and exchanging experiences on several subjects. The round table discussions were held in parallel and had the following main topics:
- Operations
- Mechanical and Maintenance
- Granulation
- Instruments and advanced controls

Production Record
During the symposium Pejman Djavdan, President Stamicarbon, congratulated Mr. A. Al-Qahthani, Manager Operations of Saudi Arabian Fertilizer Co., for achieving a record urea production of
3740 mtpd with the SAFCO IV plant. The plant is further noteworthy for being the first urea plant with the synthesis entirely made of Safurex^® stainless steel.

Stamicarbon Beach Olympics
As 2008 is an Olympic year, the symposium featured Stamicarbon’s own Beach Olympics as social event in the program. With great teamwork of all participants a bridge of bamboo sticks was built as opening activity. After that the participants could choose their own sport or workshop from Beach golf, Clay pigeon shooting, Fencing, Nordic walking, Penalty shooting or Power kiting. We all had a great time. The winners of the Beach Olympics got their golden, silver or bronze medal during the conference dinner.

Symposium Papers
Most of the symposium papers are available on-line. They can be found, printed or downloaded from the urea symposium paper page.

Photographs
During the symposium many photographs were taken. They can be found, printed or downloaded from the photo impression page.

Stamicarbon looks back at a successful event. It will further innovations, like it was demonstrated with the new AVANCORE^® technology for urea synthesis and with the Granulation technology for urea finishing. Developments and experiences will be shared again during the next symposium in 2012.