[Originally published on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/office-diaries-need-common-sense-dr-a-k-srivastava/
Some 16 years back, I retired after 34 years of service. During my career, after spending about a quarter of professional-life in Research & Development, I opted to be transferred to the Business Development wing. Here, I headed business operations of a division which was a pioneer in development of indigenous know-how and production and marketing of a group of 8 speciality-chemicals called catalysts and other chemicals, those were widely used in the Industry. I will be describing real-life situations and what lessons future managers may learn.
This is the 4th article in the series. See others at:
Not giving up till the last (Nov 18, 2020)
Excess of everything is back (Nov 24, 2020)
What all is written in the equipment-manuals, take it with a pinch of Salt ! (December 4, 2020)
In most of the Fertilizer plants, based on Naphtha or Gas Reformation processes, 8 Catalysts are used, starting from process feed purification to Ammonia Synthesis. With new developments in hardwares and process technology, in modern high capacity plants, catalysts with very high activity, selectivity and mechanically robust varieties are prefered. Also preferred are those which may tolerate fluctuations in operating parameters and other ups and downs. When a customer chooses a catalyst vendor, the proven performance history, in similar plants, play a great role in decision making in favor of any particular brand / product. Sometimes all catalyst-suppliers are from a single vendor or a mix of two or three vendors, based on primarily financial considerations and each vendor normally gives individual guarantees for each catalyst.
The set of catalysts generally used in Fertilizer industries are Cobalt-Molybdenum based feed Hydro-Desulphurization (HDS), Zinc Oxide based Desulphurization (ZDS), Nickel-Alumina- Calcium/ Magnesium based Primary Reformation (PR), Nickel-Alumina based Secondary - Reformation (SR) , Iron- Chrome (in some cases Copper also) based High Temperature Shift Conversion (HTS) and Copper-Zinc-Titanium based Low Temperature Shift Conversion (LTS) , Nickel-Alumina based Methanation and Iron based Ammonia Synthesis Catalysts. Around the globe only 5-6 companies have know-how to manufacture and supply these catalysts and in India, based on indigenous know-how, there is only one company.
We supplied a charge of SR catalyst to a large capacity gas based Fertilizer plant in central India, where the PR catalyst was from a foreign- manufacturer. The SR catalyst was giving satisfactory performance, sometimes @ 135% of the designed load. Around 1 ½ years after its commissioning, we received an urgent SOS from the said plant, informing that our SR catalyst had pre-maturely failed, as the pressure-drop across the SR catalyst reactor had gone high. Plant was shut-down. The plant authorities threatened to en-cash the Performance Bank Guarantee provided by us. When we visited the plant, we found it was completely shut-down, and cooling-down was in process. The guaranteed process output of individual catalysts were normal before the high pressure-drop was noted across the SR reactor. When the SR reactor was opened up, we found that the top one meter catalyst-bed was covered with huge dust and broken catalyst rings, causing high pressure-drop. We took three sets (each of two samples) from the SR reactor at three different heights of Zero (top of the bed), 50 Cm and 100 Cm and sent it for Chemical Analysis in the Client’s Labs. Next day the sample’s results came and it was found that the dust and most of the broken rings have had sufficient percentages( not to be ignored ) of Magnesium, along with Nickel, Al and Calcium.
Our SR Catalyst did not have Magnesium at all. Only the preceding catalyst in the up-stream before the SR catalyst, was imported PR catalyst, which incidentally had 8-10 % Magnesium Oxide in it as promoter. Now, the picture was clear. The real culprit was the imported PR catalyst which crumbled, not our SR catalyst. We did discharge the whole lot, got it sieved to get rid of the dust and other foreign materials, re-filled it with the old catalyst and topped-it-up upto one meter, with a fresh lot of SR catalyst. The plant was re-commissioned and SR catalyst gave excellent performance for another 6 years.
Now, the plant-authorities were set behind the foreign PR catalyst suppliers.
Common sense should prevail even when the most technical issues are at stake.