AMOMAX®-CASALE catalyst wins Sandmeyer Award

AMOMAX®-CASALE, the outstanding catalysts resulted by the cooperation between Casale and Clariant, has been recently awarded by SCS with the Sandmeyer Award. The Swiss Chemical Society (SCS) represents chemists and scientists from chemistry related fields in national and international organizations, with about 2700 individual and institutional members representing more than 50 countries. This award has been assigned just a few months after the prestigious ICIS’s 2020 Best Sustainable Process Award. AmoMax®-Casale, the new catalyst for a greener and less energy consuming process for industrial large scale ammonia synthesis, is an evolution of the well-known, wustite-based catalyst, AmoMax® 10 and represents the latest innovation in ammonia synthesis catalysts. AmoMax-Casale, while retaining the same superior resistance to ageing , poisoning and mechanical strength of AmoMax® 10 is significantly more active. This feature allows to reduce the loop recycle rate and the loop pressure and/or to increase the ammonia production. The higher activity of AmoMax-Casale contributes to improve the overall operating efficiency either by saving energy, up to 40.000 kcal per Mton of ammonia or, alternatively, by increasing the production up to 5-6%, provided, in the latter case, that enough fresh make up gas is sent to the synloop and production is limited by the make-up gas compressor. Furthermore, the new catalyst reduces the CO2 emissions by 3.500 Tons per year (1.500 MTD ammonia plant).In case the bottleneck is the air compressor, then the production increase can be obtained by slightly reducing the purge gas flow rate whilst keeping the same make up flow increase can be obtained by slightly reducing the purge gas flow rate whilst keeping the same make up flow. The Sandmeyer Award lecture takes place at the SCS Fall Meeting on September 10, 2021 and at the Freiburger Symposium on April 23, 2021.