SPIC plans to use natural gas in fertilizer plant
The conversion-modernisation-capacity increase plan was announced at the Tamil Nadu Global Investors’ Meet held during September 2015.
Southern Petrochemicals Industries Corporation (SPIC) has begun work on a Rs.6,000 crore plan to switch over to natural gas from naphtha as feedstock in its manufacturing process.
For this purpose, SPIC has drawn up a three-pronged strategy. The first one calls for replacing naphtha with natural gas as feedstock for use in its urea plant.
Second, modernising the existing vintage plant and third, increasing the production capacity.
“We have started the conversion work by ordering equipment. However, engineering and erection of the equipment has been kept pending. The conversion (from natural gas to naphtha) will increase the production capacity to two million tonnes per annum,” said a top official.
The conversion-modernisation-capacity increase plan was announced at the Tamil Nadu Global Investors’ Meet held during September 2015.
Talking to The Hindu, a SPIC official said: “All the urea manufacturers in the country have been asked to use natural gas instead of naphtha as feedstock in their manufacturing process.
The switch over of manufacturing process is in line with the policy announcement. Currently, we are using naphtha as important pipeline linkage as natural gas is not available to us. The final leg of conversion will be completed along with the implementation of gas pipeline project.”
Regarding the brownfield project, he said the urea plant was established some 40 years ago and it had been modernised several times.
“We would like to modernise once again to take the plant to next level, extend the life of the plant, reduce energy consumption and increase production capacity from the present 0.62 million tonnes by 1.27 million tonnes,” he said.