OREANDA-NEWS. October 17, 2012. OCI Construction Group has selected ThyssenKrupp Uhde for an engineering and procurement contract for the construction of one of the world’s largest single-train liquid fertilizer plants to be built in the United States of America, reported the press-centre of ThyssenKrupp.

The German plant construction company ThyssenKrupp Uhde, part of the Business Area Plant Technologies, was awarded the contract for the design and supply of a liquid fertilizer plant, which will be built near Wever, Iowa in the USA, through its U.S. business partner Uhde Corporation of America.

The liquid fertilizer urea ammonium nitrate (UAN) is produced from ammonia and carbon dioxide, with urea solution, nitric acid and ammonium nitrate being produced as intermediates. The customer is Orascom Construction Industries (OCI), which is building the entire complex for its subsidiary, Iowa Fertilizer Company (IFCo). Commissioning is scheduled for 2015.

This will be the first new sizeable fertilizer complex to be built in the USA in almost 25 years.
ThyssenKrupp Uhde will develop the engineering for six of the seven process plants, as well as supplying the required process equipment and machinery. As an additional product the plant will produce a high purity urea solution (also called Diesel Exhaust Fluid, DEF) which will be used to improve the environmental performance of diesel engines by reducing the nitrogen oxides in the exhaust. The scope of supplies also includes a plant for manufacturing urea granules which will be produced using the ThyssenKrupp Uhde Fertilizer Technology (UFT) process.

ThyssenKrupp's equally highly efficient processes are also being used in the nitric acid, ammonium nitrate and UAN plants, whilst the urea plant will use the synthesis process from Stamicarbon in the Netherlands. In 2006 to 2008 ThyssenKrupp Uhde successfully engineered a similar-sized plant at the Point Lisas site on the island of Trinidad and provided the plant's key equipment. Together with the aforementioned plant in Point Lisas the new Iowa fertilizer plant with a daily production capacity of 4,300 tonnes will be the largest single-train UAN plant in the world.

"The Iowa fertilizer plant is the next chapter in our success story with OCI, which, after Egypt and Algeria, has now taken us to the United States," said Dr. Michael Thiemann, Chairman of the Management Board of ThyssenKrupp Uhde. "Our outstanding technological expertise and the excellent performance of our reference plants contributed to this success against international competition."

OCI Construction Group Chief Operating Officer, Osama Bishai, commented: “We have worked well with ThyssenKrupp Uhde on several projects and believe our performance on this project, with an overall investment of USD 1.4 billion, will be a landmark reference for us to grow our business in North America.”

The OCI Construction Group can look back on a long-standing relationship and successful track record of working with ThyssenKrupp Uhde on various projects. These include several nitrogen fertilizer plants in Egypt and Algeria with a combined value of more than USD two billion.