World-Wide Trends in Urea Process Technologies

Keywords: trends, urea, process technologies.

Demand for urea is booming as never before. Since the financial crisis in 2008 the number of new urea plant license contracts awarded each year has nearly doubled! This paper explains and discusses the drivers behind this.

This paper will further provide a historical overview of the market shares of the various urea process technologies (Stamicarbon, Saipem, TEC, Casale, NIIC and Chinese design institutes) with the focus on the last decade, as well as a prediction of the market shares for the near future. It covers the process technologies and construction materials that are being used in the latest phases of each urea technology. It also discusses the chosen design capacities and which final product has been selected, along with the practical experience of these latest plants. Finally the paper discusses the worldwide trends in urea process technologies.

Jo Eijkenboom and Mark Brouwer, UreaKnowHow.com B.V., Maastricht, Netherlands

16 pages, 14 figures, 1 table, 5 references