Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31
By Maksim Tsurkov – Trend:
The urea (carbamide) plant of Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR may produce about 50,000 tons of urea already this year, Khayal Jafarov, the plant’s director, told reporters in Baku May 31.
He said that the commissioning process is built in such a way that the plant will be able to operate at full capacity from day one, after the launch.
“The process of commissioning is underway,” Jafarov said. “Two weeks ago the plant began to receive natural gas and started steam production on May 30. A steam generator will be launched soon. All components of the equipment will be inspected in detail. This process will take about six months.”
He added that the demand for urea in Azerbaijan is about 150,000 tons per year.
The plant will produce 1,200 tons of ammonia and, subsequently, 2,000 tons of urea per day. It is planned to supply a quarter of production, that is, 150,000-200,000 tons of urea, to the Azerbaijani domestic market. The remaining part will be exported to Turkey, Georgia and the markets of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea countries.
The cost of the project is 750-780 million euros.
South Korea’s Samsung Engineering won the tender for the construction of the urea plant. Samsung Engineering acts as a general contractor of the plant’s construction, but it has no license for production of urea and ammonia, which will be by-product in the urea production process.
Therefore, the relevant licensing agreements were signed with Haldor Topsoe company (Denmark) for production of ammonia and Stamicarbon B.V. company (the Netherlands) for production of urea.
Production at the plant will be environmentally friendly.
The plant will have an autonomous electricity system. The plant will consume 25-26 MW of electricity per hour.
The urea plant will require 1.3 million cubic meters of gas per day or 435 million cubic meters of gas per year for operation at full capacity.
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