Three subsidiaries of Italian engineering group Maire Tecnimont SpA – MET Development, Stamicarbon and NextChem – have started work on a renewable power-to-fertilizer plant in Kenya.
MET Development has signed an agreement with Kenyan company Oserian Development Co. for the development of the plant at the Oserian Two Lakes Industrial Park, located on the southern banks of Lake Naivasha, 100 km north of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
The renewable power-to-fertilizer plant is planned to include capacity for 550,000 mt/d of calcium ammonium nitrate (CAN) and/or NPK fertilizers, Maire Tecnimont said in a May 17 statement.
The fertilizer product will be produced predominately as CAN, but the plant will have the flexibility to produce NPK fertilizers to meet the demand of local agricultural requirements, and will be the first state-of-the-art, commercial-scale nitrate fertilizer plant from renewables according to the engineering group.
Stamicarbon will provide its “Stami Green Ammonia” technology to produce ammonia and its nitric acid technology, while Spain’s Incro AS via its partnership with Stamicarbon will supply the nitrate finishing technology for CAN production, said Maire Tecnimont.
The project participants are targeting the start of commercial operations of the plant in 2025. Output will be dedicated to local Kenyan agri-business and will reduce the dependency on imported nitrogen fertilizers and substitute around 25 percent of the import volume, according to the Italian engineering group. It put total nitrogen fertilizer imports at around 800,000 mt/y, based on 2019 data.
The plant will be located near Kenya’s largest geothermal energy basin and will be partly powered by solar energy sources produced onsite, displacing the need for fossil fuels and eliminating carbon from production. According to Maire Tecnimont, the new facility will reduce carbon emission with about 100,000 mt of CO2 per year, compared to a gas-based fertilizer plant. The project will utilize approximately 70 MW of renewable energy.
MET Development is currently engaging with local and international partners to set up the development consortium, while the project has begun preliminary engineering works. NextChem aims to start the Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) by the end of this year.