Final licensor selected for Australia’s only fully integrated urea production facility

NEURIZER has selected Stamicarbon to deliver the process design package for front-end engineering design (FEED) of Australia’s only fully integrated urea production facility, in Leigh Creek.

NeuRizer says that the NeuRizer Urea Project (NRUP) is a nationally significant project that will deliver low-cost, high-quality, nitrogen-based fertiliser to ensure secure supply for local and export agriculture markets. The company aims to become Australia’s first carbon-neutral producer of urea fertiliser. The decarbonisation pathway for NRUP is embedded in the FEED process to ensure that it is carbon neutral from first operations in 2025.

NRUP will be a 2,850m t/d, low-carbon melt and granulation plant. It will use Stamicarbon’s Launch Melt flash design for a urea melt plant with pool reactor, and its Launch Finish granulation design for the urea granulation plant. Stamicarbon designs and licenses fertiliser plant technologies.

Flash design is one of Stamicarbon’s variants of melt concepts with improved energy efficiency leading to significant reductions in steam consumption. The company claims the fluid-bed granulation design is characterised by low-formaldehyde consumption, low dust and ammonia emissions, high quality product, and high onstream times. They require minimal equipment, significantly reducing the footprint and plant capital costs, and reducing maintenance costs and operational expenditure.

Stephen Zwart, VP of Licensing at Stamicarbon, said: “This is the first new grassroots urea capacity in Australia in decades. It is a genuinely solid project with an innovative concept that has been built from the ground up. We are proud to be contributing to carbon neutral fertiliser solutions that will help close urea supply-demand in Australia, supporting farmers and food production across the country.”

With the selection of Stamicarbon as a licensor, NeuRizer has locked in all the licensors and proprietary equipment for completion of FEED. Other partners in the project include KBR, which is providing its ammonia technology.