Christopher Biegel, P.Eng. Dan Morton
In June 2014, Agrium’s Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta Nitrogen facility took an outage to perform maintenance on the ammonia plant
This maintenance included the replacement of the high and low temperature shift catalysts. Upon removal of the spent catalysts and support balls, new catalyst support grids supplied by Haldor Topsoe were safely installed inside the reactors. The reactors were then reloaded with Haldor Topsoe’s HTS and LTS catalysts. The plant was restarted, the catalysts were reduced and HTS and LTS put online. This paper describes the modifications made to the catalyst support system, the resulting decrease in pressure drop and the reduction in operating cost.
