Revamping technology in urea plant operations

Freddy Buitink, Head of Sales Evolve at Stamicarbon, shares insights into revamping industrial plants and tackling engineering challenges. He showcases his expertise and offers listeners a rare glimpse into the nuances of plant operations and the importance of attention to detail.

Explore the intricate dance between maximizing capacity and enhancing energy efficiency, especially in the context of urea production. This episode is a treasure trove for anyone interested in the complexities of industrial engineering and the future of sustainable plant operations.

Chapters

• 0:10 Revamping Technology for Increased Capacity
• 10:34 Plant Revamp Challenges and Considerations
• 16:36 Optimizing Energy Efficiency for Plant Revamps

Transcript

Mark Sleijser (Host)

00:03

All right, welcome everybody to a new episode of Stamitalks. Today we're going to talk about revamping technology, and for that, we have our guest, Freddy. Welcome, Freddy. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

00:13

Thank you, Mark. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

00:15

Freddy, Freddy Buitink, you are Head of Evolve Sales, I think is your official job title, so it means head of the sales of revamping. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

00:24

That's correct. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

00:25

Can you, before we get into the revamping itself, I'd like to learn a bit more about your background. Maybe, can you share, how did you end up in the industry? How did you end up with Stamicarbon? 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

00:36

So, supposedly not starting with when I'm born, but you're more interested in when I started working. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

00:41

You can start with when you were born, but I'm not sure if you want to disclose that information. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

00:48

Yeah, it was too long ago. People may lose track. So, I started working for Stamicarbon or, I have to say, for DSM (Dutch State Mines). It was the mother company of Stamicarbon at that time in 1986, and Stamicarbon I'd never heard about in 1986. I started working in mechanical labs doing scale-up of chemical products for DSM, a worldwide company. 

01:10

But I heard about Stamicarbon a couple of years later by a colleague of mine already working for Stamicarbon, and he said, Freddy, I think you'd like this company very much. It's very international-oriented. So DSM was more like internal-focused at that time and Stamicarbon was selling the technology developed by DSM at that time. So I looked into Stamicarbon and it really got very attractive. So they put the vacancy up, and I applied on the vacancy, and I got the first contract with Stamicarbon in September, the first of September 1990. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

01:45

1990, okay. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

01:47

And the 9th of September 1990, I was already on a site in India, in Kerala province, starting up, as learning on the job, activities, separated from wife, which was quite an endeavor. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

02:01

And that time that was probably a few months start-up?

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

02:03

Yeah, at that time you have to remember there was no connection with the home front in 1990. The connection was very poor, so if I had to call my wife for five minutes in a week, it cost me a lot of money to connect, and you really have to wait a long time before you reply, otherwise, you are completely out of sync. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

02:22

Okay, but that's almost 35 years ago, so quite an experienced guy. So then you started to work for Stamicarbon as, well, maybe training on the job, starting up a plant. Was that a urea plant or was that a different technology? 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

02:38

That was a caprolactam unit. It was a couple of huge units. They have different sections; they call it section five, six and seven, and they developed at that time two plants in China. The first plant was in India. It was already starting up, that was me learning on the job, and the second job in 1992, I had to commission one of the caprolactam plants in China. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

02:55

Okay. So then, how did you end up in the urea business? 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

02:59

Stamicarbon sold a lot of licenses. Urea was one of them, and at the time I did my commissioning job, it was in 1992, 1993, my wife said, because I was for a year in China, so it was not really a good period to raise kids and have family life. So my wife said, I think it's best you quit this kind of job because I don't see it happening, raising kids with you being away all the time. So then I said, okay, let's switch to another job and DSM, Stamicarbon that time offered me an engineering job in the melamine-urea business, which I took up. That means still commissioning job, but much less so than pure commissioning job. So that's the reason I started to do the engineering in the urea plants and at that time DSM or Stamicarbon, working for Stamicarbon, had the principle, if you really design the plant, you also have to commission the plant. So I designed a couple of plants and had the pleasure to also commission these plants. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

03:57

Eat your own dog food. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

03:59

Exactly. I think it's very important that, as an engineer, you're not limiting yourself to the drawing table, but also go in the field to see what you have done. So you face the consequences of all the mistakes you make, but you learn a lot. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

04:12

What were the, if you remember, I don't know, but, like, key insights that you gained during that period? 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

04:19

The key insights is that there're a lot of details which make the plant running. There's not only the main framework, but if you miss a detail, it also can hamper the plant. One of the examples, for example, that we missed a certain dimension, which limits the gas flow. Due to the limiting gas flow, the HP scrubber was blocking up all the time, but we couldn't figure out why. We had to open the equipment to figure out why, and only then we missed a small piece of low-pressure piping which was really hampering the thing. So, we cut it out a little bit and after that it was solved. So, then you notice, okay, you have to be very careful measuring and determining all the nitty-gritty details, which is important for the functioning of the plant. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

05:05

Okay, is that also where your, I'm going to call it love, not sure if it's love, but your enthusiasm for revamping originated? 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

05:15

Yeah, I am a guy who likes challenges, to be honest. So, if you do a couple of grassroots, which is more a standard approach, it's really a proven concept, what you normally work with. So, it is really detailed out to the letter. 

05:28

There's a little variation because you do not want to risk anything; it's very secure design, so to make sure that the client exactly gets what he wants. Revamping business, it requires much more flexibility and creativity to make the best out of it, to make sure you cover everything. It's more complex, so that I really like. I like complex things. Some people like simple things. I like complex matters. I really get energy from solving it and troubleshooting, that's my passion. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

05:57

Okay. So, how does that start? Because, of course, you get approached by a client; they say, well, then they're probably not going to reach out to you and say, hey, Freddy, I've got a complex challenge for you, but they probably will come to you with a specific need, which my guess is mostly a need for capacity increase. How does that work? How do you start? 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

06:25

We have two different approaches. One approach is what we call a passive acquisition. That means the client approaches us either with a problem, which we use to also teach the client what they can do as additional to increase its revenues and its lowest emissions or energy. And sometimes we go out to the client and we analyze clients upfront and say, ok, this client is operating the plant in such a way, I think there is a potential to get more of the plant to increase his revenue or lower the cost. Then we visit the client, show him in principle what we can do for that, show them also from client side what we expect the cost to be and the revenues would be, so he can do his own return on investment calculation to determine if the revamp would make sense for him, yes or no. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

07:13

Okay, but then it's, of course, it's always a paper exercise, but I can imagine that if you sell a new plant, then I think the benefits are very clear. I think if you sell a revamp, then there's always a certain amount of uncertainty involved, there's more risk. So, how do you convince a client of that, what you are telling him, that that's achievable, that it's realistic? 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

07:37

I can give you a practical example. 

07:39

I had a client which had a fairly old plant, 800 metric tons per day plant, which he wanted to revamp to 1300 metric tons per day, and he wanted to do a revamp to minimize cost. 

07:52

So, we investigated this option and we found out that yeah, we can really do it by putting a lot of lines and doing modifications, adding 20 pieces of new equipment and then slowly increase the capacity to 1300 tons while still retaining the old equipment with its limitations and its issues. 

08:12

The client only asked us to do a revamp, but then I thought, okay, in this case the client would be much more helped if he has a partly new plant, so part of the plant completely new, with only the rotating equipment being existing, because that only requires four pieces of equipment, a hell of a lot less maintenance, and electricity, and energy consumption, while the investment cost was only 10% more than the whole revamp. So, I presented the client at the time that I did the study, I presented the client example, now we can do this, of course, we can do that, and the cost is minimum, and we have minimized investment. Or we can scrap it, a big part of it, and build just a complete new section that costs only three pieces of equipment and only three million more. The client looked at me and said, are you serious that this can be done? I said, I'm pretty serious that this can be done. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

09:07

But then both for a total capacity of 1300? 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

09:09

Yes, so the client just stopped the study and started directly with the project. So they didn't wait, and now the plant is in operation and the client is extremely happy with the decision made at that time. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

09:19

Okay, so do you always start with a study like that? 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

09:23

Yes, and why do we do that? For a new plant, of course, you have no limitations, but if you have an existing plant, you have not only just a number of pieces of equipment, but you have the way the plant is operating, and sometimes it operates well and sometimes it does not operate well. So, you cannot just get the drawings and draw, and, again, you have to really go to the plant and look at all the nitty-gritty details, the valves, emission levels, intake levels, production levels, to make sure that you do not miss anything if you do the revamp, because with the revamp you add something to the plant, but the existing plant is still there. 

09:58

You can make a nice revamp, but if the existing plant is not operating well or is not well matched with the revamp, you, as a client, you will have a lot of problems. In the end, we also will have a problem, but the client is much more faced with the issue than we are. So, Samicarbon, we have a reputation to uphold, so we make sure that the design is as best as we can make it for that line. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

10:23

Okay, but then, you say that there's lots of nitty-gritty stuff. You mentioned as an example, the quality of a valve, or if a valve opens or closes easily or not. I think it takes quite some time to investigate a whole plant, if you go into that level of detail. Wouldn't it be just easier to, well, just build a new plant? 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

10:42

Easy it will be, but if you look at the cost perspective, I can imagine you have a 2000 metric tons per day plant, but you want 1000 tons per day more. 

10:52

You can build a new 1,000 metric tons per day plant on a separate location and build it there. But then you don't make use of the existing equipment already in place, like compressor pumps, and so you have to build everything from scrap. So, in our experience, a new plant, additional capacity of a new plant, makes life a little bit simpler for that side, but it will cost twice as much as a revamp using maximum margins you have in the existing plant. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

11:16

Wow, okay, so, but then this study becomes more important, so you do more work upfront. So, just for my reference, how long do you... Of course, a small plant is different than a completely big plant, but for such a study, do you need weeks, months, years? How long do you need for such a project? 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

11:40

It depends indeed, what you say, a little bit on the scope. We call it the scope. What does the client really want? Is it only capacity increase, or we combine it with energy revamp, or only an energy revamp, or an emission revamp. We look at the level of engineering we require to get a successful project and that determines the price and the time it takes. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

12:00

Okay, but it's sort of, if it's the most simple version of a revamp, it probably is, my guesstimate is a month, I don't know, up until.... 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

12:11

Four months, five months, because you have to remember, revamp is complex and you want to make a success because if you do the revamp, it's not only important that the revamp works well, the additional one, but also the existing plant would still be able to run smoothly. So, you have to also look at the connections between these two, an alignment of the existing plant with the new plant. And there's the knowledge you're looking for, because you really have to know what you're doing. You have to really compare each line, each flow, to make sure that you don't miss anything. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

12:40

Okay, do you know examples of things, what you said, where something was missed or something didn't end up well? 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

12:55

Normally, we meet all our targets, but again, Stamicarbon is responsible for the engineering, the principal engineering. We are not responsible for detailed and basic engineering. For example, Stamicarbon checks all the process requirements, process lines, but utilities typically just specify what we need and the contractor is supposed to pick it up and make sure we have it. So, in one of the clients we have, we designed the plant, and we started up the plant, and the plant was not performing as you would have expected. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

13:21

Okay. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

13:22

And then you have the issue. Okay, what is the problem? Where is the problem? Is it in our design? Is it the contractor's design? Is it at the client's side? How do you find out? It took a lot of time to evaluate what the issue was. In this case, the issue was the lack of supply of cooling water to a certain condenser, which backs up the whole issues to the rest of the plant. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

13:41

Okay, and then the result of this was a decreased or not meeting the expected capacity? 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

13:49

In this case, the emission limitation was the cause. But in this case, we could not meet the emission limitation because the pressure was too high, so they had to vent even more instead of less. So it was really an issue. 

14:01

In the end, we had to reduce the capacity to be able to meet the guarantees. In the end, the client had to step in and to make even bypasses to compensate it. Now, in the meantime, we are going to solve these cooling water issues and once it is solved, we can put the plant back in operation, as we would have done. 

14:19

But this is an example of what can go wrong. Of course, we have warned the client upfront that there is a risk that you have a higher demand on steam and cooling water, and we proposed a design where you have a lower demand on steam and cooling water, so you don't have to be concerned about it. So, the stuff of Stamicarbon is only to check its equipment, what he designed. It's not our task to check the cooling water, but in this situation it would be better if you would have been involved from all the phases, so then we would have identified already that the cooling water was not sufficient and that would have caused this kind of problem and we could have mitigated before. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

14:54

So then the project takes extra time, extra investments. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

14:58

That's always the case. If you want to do good work, you can make sharp corners and save costs, but it can really backfire and increase the cost even more.

Mark Sleijser (Host)

15:11

Okay, so you mentioned also, well, actually, combinations, right? So, you've mentioned capacity revamping, also emission revamping and energy revamping. How do those three work together? Because I think we all see that the industry is getting under increasing pressure to reduce emissions, but at the same time, I think, just from that perspective alone, probably the return on investment would solely rely on carbon tax, which might be beneficial, but at least at the moment it's not yet. How does this work, the combination of emission, energy and capacity? 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

15:56

We have three types of revamps. If you want to separate them, we have the capacity revamp, the energy revamp, and the emission revamp. Emission revamp is typically triggered by increasing norms from the governments. The government lowers the threshold of emissions. You will lose your license to operate, LTO, we call it, and then you have to do something as client. That means you have to fulfill the requirements and there's typically no payback because typically it's only cost. So, you can, of course, capture more ammonia, and ammonia never weights up to the cost of investment if you do that. Second one is energy. Energy has directly the link with decarbonization, because the less energy you use, the less carbon you use for making this energy. So it's a direct link and that is nowadays, we see really is popping up as even a standalone revamp tool to reduce the energy consumption and thereby also reduce the carbon production. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

16:58

And is there sort of a... Probably you're going to say every plant is different, every region is different, but is there sort of a rule of thumb to how much energy you can reduce? 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

17:09

Yeah, you have already given the answer. It depends on the plant. We have in our conventional plants the typical steam consumption fairly high, between 1200 to 1600 kg per ton of urea. In the 1960s-70s, we developed our stripping plants, which were the big step forwards and the steam consumption reduced between 800 to 1000 kg per ton. Recently we have sold our Ultra-Low Energy, where the energy consumption is between 550 to 600 kg per ton of urea. So, in principle, a revamp can mimic the latest grassroots plants and also go to 550, 600. But that requires a substantial investment on energy. And it's also not limited to Stamicarbon technology only. We can also do it with competing technology and reach the same figures. But that requires a substantial investment in, of course, in high-pressure equipment. We can also lower energy by only applying low pressure equipment, but then we cannot reach that low levels, but still interesting levels for most clients. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

18:14

Okay, so if you have a, let's say, older plant, let's say, older than 10 years ago, you could decrease your energy consumption by, well, at least 200-300 tons of steam per ton of urea. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

18:26

That's correct. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

18:27

So that's substantial.

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

18:28

But normally it makes, related to ROI, not really any sense because the investment level is very high and still, because of the oil and gas price, the steam cost is still low. So if you look at investment level, there's typically a payback of 15-20 years, maybe longer, but if you combine it with capacity, you won't have to reduce the energy anyhow. 

18:51

Then it's better to combine it with the capacity. At least you get some return on investment due to additional production. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

18:57

Okay, so capacity-wise, you can increase capacity a bit or a lot. I think I've heard you say in the past, from 10% to 100% capacity increase. Let's say, on the low end of that range. If you would only increase capacity with 10%, but you would also want to have the energy revamp in place, let's say, to pay for the return on investment, would that make sense? Or would you need a larger capacity increase, sort of to get to a sweet spot in the return on investment? 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

19:34

That's exactly why we do studies. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

19:36

Okay. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

19:37

If there's one solution possible, you don't have to do studies. But in studies we investigate and one of the terms is CAPEX-OPEX comparison. I'm not sure if people listening are aware. CAPEX is the capital investment and OPEX are the operational expenses you have. Operational expenses, energy consumption, emissions, CAPEX, and investment figures and net present value. You do the calculations. So, coming back to this point, the OPEX can be influenced, of course, by the steam consumption, by reducing energy. But we'd like to find a sweet spot between, say, the increase of capacity and the CAPEX you need per ton of urea and the investment level. 

20:26

So, just a comparison. Suppose you increase the capacity by 20% and it costs about 10 million. But you can also increase the capacity by 30%. It costs you 20 million. So you already figure out, 20%, 10 million. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

20:43

I would probably go for the 20 percent. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

20:46

Exactly.

Mark Sleijser (Host)

20:47

Okay, so that's the options you give a client and then based on that, I think, the return on investment is calculated and the investment decision is made or not made.

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

20:57

Okay, but it's not as easy as that because, remember, revamp requires feedstock. Feedstock has to be available; ammonia, CO2, water, cooling water, steam. So sometimes the client is just limited on what he has as feedstock. Otherwise he has to increase also his feedstock. So sometimes it's as simple as the client has enough ammonia but no CO2. So he has to get the CO2. Or vice versa, he has the CO2, but not the ammonia. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

21:23

You can always add a small-scale Stami Green Ammonia plant next to it and you can add some ammonia capacity, but that's for a different podcast. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

21:32

Also, different CAPEX level, I believe. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

21:34

I think so. I think you've already described some of the difficulties for revamp. So it's about feedstock, it's about getting into the details, it's making sure to balance CAPEX and OPEX. Are there other things that you need to... Also, I think you mentioned the dependency on the construction party, and the design and the operation of the plant needs to be aligned. Are there any other difficulties related to revamp?

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

22:03

Remember that a revamp you work with an existing plant. An existing plant has equipment designed as a grassroot to be closely together in a packed environment. So now you do the revamping, so you have to connect to an existing plant, but typically there's no room or limited room left. The equipment, the whole civil structure, is built to maintain a certain weight of equipment. If you start just installing new pieces of equipment, you can imagine... 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

22:28

It will all come down. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

22:29

It can all come down.

22:30

Like sometimes you hear flat buildings, something is added and it comes down. So that's a risk you have to mitigate. So we try to find concepts, designs. We prepare designs which is an add, we call it add-on design, which minimize this cost and also the downtime. Remember, an existing plant. You want to keep this in operation while doing the revamp. That means that you don't want to interfere with the existing operation. If you do a lot inside the plant environment, you have to stop the plant for a long time and a lot of downtime means loss of money. So we have designed a lot of designs where we use add-on equipment to minimize downtime, which the tie-ins can be make during a shutdown, a regular turnaround, and then you can put the plant easily in operation without having been limited to the turnaround time. So you construct the plant parallel to the one and you put it in operation, also making sure you have the flexibility either to shut down the additional capacity or not. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

23:30

Okay, so you have more buttons to play with. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

23:34

You have the flexibility to the client. So if there's a problem with the add-on unit, you just switch it off and you run down with the existing unit. A lot of clients want to limit the risk by doing so. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

23:46

Okay, and I think then you can also play a bit with the amount of feed that you need, depending on the capacity that you want to have operational. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

23:53

You turn around your flexibility and capacity and low turnover, turn down, and the maximum capacity is also increasing. At the same time, you can also select different products in the outlet. Remember, you're making urea, but urea is not the only product. You can measure different outlets you have. You have UAN, you can go to DEF or AdBlue. You have a lot of different products you can make. You still have to select what you do with the downstream section. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

24:23

Okay, that's very interesting. Are there any future thoughts for revamping? Where do you see the industry move from here? 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

24:33

I see that the number of new plants will be decreasing because of the decarbonization pressure. You see a lot of focus going to liquid ammonia currently and we are a little bit left behind nowadays. But we still need food. Population is still raising, so still increasing the population. So we need still to have urea, and investing in new plant with nowadays prices maybe exorbitant high. So because of the lower price of revamp, I think most clients will be more interested in doing a revamp than building a complete new grassroot plant, because I think most investors are not really looking to heavy investment in common fertilizer because of the carbon footprint issues. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

25:16

Okay, so then, by the sounds of this, you'll have a very busy time ahead of you. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

25:25

I've dedicated engineers working for me, so I just expand my business and I hope the clients see the same point of view. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

25:32

Same benefit. Well, I'm sure that everybody knows how to reach you if they want to discuss revamping in more detail. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

25:40

Just send a mail to info@stamicarbon.com and we make sure it comes to the right people. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

25:46

Well, that's a great way of ending the podcast. Thank you, Freddy, for your insights and contribution to this, and also thank you to all our listeners for tuning in to Stamitalks, and I hope that you will do the same next time, thank you. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

26:02

Thank you for the opportunity, Mark. 

Mark Sleijser (Host)

26:04

Most welcome. 

Freddy Buitink (Guest)

26:05

Bye-bye.