Re:Soaring fertilizer prices could see millions more underno...
by Xylakant on Monday December 26, 2022 @11:59AM
(#34139429)
Just to give you an idea of the timelines: The BASF is currently building a small test plant to evaluate steamcracking via (renewable) electricity - it‘s expected to fire up in 2023 and will process about 6 tons of hydrocarbons a day (so roughly 2000 tons per year). https://www.basf.com/global/en/media/news-releases/2022/09/p...
The actual plant with two steamcrackers processes about two million tons. https://www.basf.com/global/en/who-we-are/organization/locat... The plant is gigantic, and the core of the industrial park. A lot of further production depends on the output of the steamcrackers, so when they had to be shut down in 2016 due to a fire in the harbor supplying the plant, 26 other plants needed to be shut down. Restarting them took days. Even if the technology were proven, we‘d be talking about a huge, multi-year engineering effort just to replace the existing plants.
The actual plant with two steamcrackers processes about two million tons. https://www.basf.com/global/en/who-we-are/organization/locat... The plant is gigantic, and the core of the industrial park. A lot of further production depends on the output of the steamcrackers, so when they had to be shut down in 2016 due to a fire in the harbor supplying the plant, 26 other plants needed to be shut down. Restarting them took days. Even if the technology were proven, we‘d be talking about a huge, multi-year engineering effort just to replace the existing plants.