Avoiding ammonia plant shutdown
Avoiding the shutdown of BASF's ammonia plant
- The Challenge
Misdiagnosed problem at fertilizer plant could cause costly shutdown
- The Impact
BASF avoids shutdown and huge revenue losses
- The Solution
Correct diagnosis and a new specification power system
Client:BASF
Location:Antwerp, Belgium
Sectors:Petrochemical and refining
The Challenge
A fast solution for a costly cooling problem
BASF is the world’s leading chemical company. In Belgium, it has seven chemical production sites – the largest is in Antwerp. Here, at the company’s ammonia installation, about €10 of revenue is generated per second from fertilizer production. A shutdown would lead to huge losses.
Yet this is what BASF faced – or thought it did. The site’s maintenance manager contacted Aggreko asking if there was any way we could provide 7.5 MW of cooling capacity at minus 18°C at short notice. We both knew this was a near-impossible task. The real question was: is there another way to fix the problem?
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The Solution
Address the problem’s root cause: vibration
We dug a little deeper and discovered that the root cause of the problem wasn’t cooling. Instead, two compressors running at 60 Hz were vibrating too much.
We designed a power system that ran between 45 and 50 Hz, significantly reducing vibrations and making it safe to restart the installation. We initially delivered 11 x 1,250 kVA generators to start the compressor, and then scaled back to four generators running round-the-clock, with seven on standby in case another restart was needed.
