Major global mining explosives, chemicals and technology company Orica is poised to make a further material dent in Australia’s chemicals sector greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with its latest tertiary abatement technology deployment at a manufacturing plant in Queensland.
The company is commissioning the second of two tertiary abatement reactors at its Yarwun nitric acid production complex (three nitric acid plants) near Gladstone to cut circa-200,000 tonnes per annum of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions at the site. It installed the first unit earlier this year.
The site also has two ammonium nitrate plants, an ammonium nitrate emulsion and a sodium cyanide plant.
Produced from ammonia, nitric acid is a key ingredient in the creation of ammonium nitrate for explosives. Nitric acid production generates nitrous oxide, a GHG said to be 265 times more impactful than carbon dioxide.
Orica previously deployed similar tertiary emissions abatement technology at its Kooragang Island facility in New South Wales, where it has an ammonia plant, three nitric acid plants and two ammonium nitrate plants. That A$37 million project achieved successful commissioning in 2023, underpinning c500,000tpa of CO2-equivalent abatement.
Orica forged a partnership with Germany’s thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions in 2021 to deploy its state-of-the-art EnviNOx technology at its Australian sites. Catalyst beds of iron zeolite in a reactor almost completely remove nitrous oxide from a process stream, according to thyssenkrupp.
The Yarwun and Kooragang Island abatement projects are effectively removing about 140,000 combustion-engine vehicles from Australian roads using a c5tpa CO2-equivalent emission factor for the average car.
And reducing Australia’s overall industrial chemical sector emissions by 15%.
“Sustainability is at the core of our purpose, and we continue to make progress towards our sustainability and climate targets,” Orica CEO Sanjeev Gandhi said at Gladstone this week.
“This milestone highlights Orica’s commitment to sustainability, to supporting our customers in achieving their sustainability goals and to our long-term support of the local Gladstone region.
“The federal parliament’s passage of safeguard reforms last year provided Orica with the investment certainty we needed to proceed with the extension of our decarbonisation strategy. This outcome demonstrates how the right policy settings can enable key corporate commitments and result in significant emissions reductions, even across hard-to-abate sectors.”
Australia’s Safeguard Mechanism requires the country’s highest GHG-emitting facilities to reduce emissions in line with national emission reduction targets of 43% below 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero by 2050.
Ghandi said Orica’s GHG emissions had been cut by 22% from 2019 baseline levels.
“In addition to investing in low emissions technology to decarbonise its operations at its Yarwun facility, Orica is a proud strategic partner and shareholder in the neighbouring Alpha HPA manufacturing operations, an Australian-based company that produces ultra-high purity aluminium materials, serving end markets such as lithium-ion batteries, LED lighting and smartphone manufacturing,” he said.
“The partnership further reinforces Orica’s desire to grow its exposure in future-facing industries, including eMobility.
“It also leverages Orica’s strong global manufacturing asset base, simultaneously creating value and reducing waste through a circular supply and offtake agreement with Alpha HPA.”
