Russian operator starts up country’s largest ammonia plant

JSC EuroChem Northwest, a division of EuroChem Group, has commissioned its 2,890-tonne/day ammonia plant in Kingisepp, Russia.

The ammonia plant—Europe’s largest single-train production site—produces 1 million-tonnes/year of ammonia using KBR Inc.’s proprietary Purifier ammonia technology, KBR said.

Alongside technology licensing, KBR said it also provided basic engineering design for the $1-billion project, as well as various digital solutions including its proprietary remote-operations monitoring and expert-advisory service Ammonia InSite, a virtual 3D graphics-embedded operator training simulator and e-learning system, and a reliability-based maintenance system.

EuroChem Northwest said it also let earlier contracts to Maire Tecnimont SPA subsidiaries Tecnimont SPA and Tecnimont Russia OOO to provide engineering, procurement, and construction of the ammonia plant, which—built on a brownfield site—features a closed-water recycling system to prevent effluent discharges into the nearby Luga River that flows into the Baltic Sea in the Gulf of Finland, according to the operator’s web site.