Stamicarbon has been awarded Asia's largest urea debottlenecking project

On June 22 Yunnan Yuntianhua Co. Ltd. and its trading agent China National Chemical Construction Corporation have signed a Stamicarbon licensing contract for Asia's largest urea debottlenecking project. The urea CO2 stripping plant, located at Shuifu County in Yunnan Province, Peoples Republic of China, was built in 1974 with a design capacity of 1620 mtpd. The revamp will increase the capacity to 2300 mtpd, while the energy consumption will decrease. The start-up is planned for 2002.

The reason for selecting Stamicarbon's revamp technology was the combination of process economics and a very high reliability.

Add-on technology
The revamp will use Stamicarbon's high pressure Add-on technology (double stripper), proven since 1997 at the world largest single-line urea plant in Canada. This technology is very suitable for large capacity increases up to 50% of original design capacity. During the revamp a parallel stripper and parallel downstream sections will be installed, leading to short shut down requirements. The process scheme remains simple and assures full operating flexibility.

Yunnan Yuntianhua
Yunnan Yuntianhua Group Co. Ltd. is one of China's 13 large-scale fertilizer companies. It occupies 1.2 square kilometers and has more than 2800 employees. The company mainly produces urea, ammonium nitrate, methanol, formaldehyde, urea resin, pentaerythritol, sodium formate and glass fibre. The company is now constructing the first polytrioxane plant in China, which will be put into operation this year.

Stamicarbon
Stamicarbon is the licensing subsidiary of the Dutch chemicals and materials group DSM. Assignments range from feasibility studies and expert services to large scale licensing projects, mainly for urea and polyethylene. With more than 200 licensing projects realized and a global nameplate share of around 45%, Stamicarbon is world-market leader in urea. Apart from grass root plants Stamicarbon has been involved in 55 revamps in conventional and stripping urea plants. The Stamicarbon Urea 2000plus TM technology is an important breakthrough in grass roots urea plants, which additionally offers tremendous opportunities for revamping any type of urea plant.