Avoiding the shutdown of BASF's ammonia plant

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?

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.

Without our power package, BASF’s ammonia plant would have faced shutdown for up to six weeks. At €10 per second, the revenue losses would have added up fast.

Instead, Aggreko helped BASF restart the installation with a power system that solved the root cause of the problem. With our temporary power in place, BASF could keep production going until new compressors were delivered.