Increased plant capacity and reduced maintenance at fertilizer plant

In order to increase production capacity, DneproAZOT – a Ukrainian fertilizer manufacturer – replaced its old shell-and-tube technology with a fully welded Alfa Laval Compabloc heat exchanger.

DATE 2023-11-28

Production of ammonia first started when the plant was brand new, right back in 1934. Set in the Ukrainian city of Dneprodzerzhinsk, DneproAZOT manufactures urea at its ammonia plant and two separate urea plants. The ammonia plant uses the “Kellogg” process with an annual capacity of approximately 450,000 tonnes, and the two urea plants have a combined annual capacity of 660,000 tonnes. In addition to producing ammonia and urea, DneproAZOT produces caustic soda and nitric acid.

Vladislav Levchenko, production manager at the DneproAZOT ammonia department, says “We decided to try Compabloc for gas cooling applications and I must say that we are very pleased with the result. With the old shell-and-tube system, it was only possible to cool the gas down to 65°C during the summer. With Compabloc, we can now reach temperatures as low as 35°C using the same cooling water, which is taken from the Dnieper river. This means that more water can be removed from the gas, resulting in increased urea production. Compabloc not only solved our cooling requirements, but also helped us to increase profit.”

Alfa Laval Compabloc heat exchangerThe compact, fully welded Compabloc heat exchanger is designed to operate with a wide range of aggressive media and at high temperatures and pressures. 

More about Compabloc 

Benefits

  • Increased profit
  • Increased urea production to 1300 tonnes per day
  • The Compabloc heat exchanger need only one third of the space required by the old installation.
  • Decreased the amount of cooling water
  • Stable in operation 

Customer's voice

The old shell-and-tube units were very difficult to clean, often suffered from interleakage, and had a very low heat transfer rate. Today, we are satisfied with the temperature programme, the compressor is stable in operation, we have decreased the amount of cooling water needed and we have increased urea production capacity to 1300 tonnes per day!"

Alexander Sudak, Production manager