Plant

The Plant

MADRAS FERTILIZERS LIMITED is a Central Public Sector Undertaking situated at Manali near Chennai in Tamil Nadu, South India. MFL is an ISO-9001-2000 and ISO-14001-2004 certified company.

The Plant

MFL consists of production plants, Ammonia, Urea in single streams and NPK in three streams, viz. NPK A Train, B Train and C Train. Utilities Plant is the service plant supplying treated water, cooling water, off-site steam, instrument air, captive power and emergency power. On November 1, 1971, MFL commenced commercial production of Ammonia, Urea and NPK complex. The feedstock for Ammonia is Naphtha and it is being supplied by the neighboring M/s Chennai Petroleum Corporation Limited (CPCL).

The original Ammonia / Urea Plants were of Chemico design with the daily rated capacity of 750 MT (247500 MTPA) and 885 MT (292000 MTPA) respectively. Initially there were only two trains to produce granulated complex fertilizers with a total installed capacity of 360000 MTPA and in September 1976 on more NPK stream, namely C Train, was added raising the installed capacity to 540000 MTPA, all by Hindustan Dorr Oliver.

In 1991, the old Chemico converter of Ammonia Plant was replaced with the latest S 200 Radial Converter.

Revamp

The company, to extend the economic life of the plants by another 15 years and also envisaging improvement in energy consumption, undertook a major Revamp-cum-Modernization and Capacity Enhancement of its plants at a cost of Rs 600 Cr during 1993-1998. Production from the Revamped Plants commenced from March 3, 1998.

Process License and Basic Engineering from M/s Haldor Topsoe, Denmark for Ammonia Plant and from M/s Urea Technologies Inc., U.S.A for Urea Plant was adopted with modern Distributed Control System (DCS). The enhanced production capacities are 1050 MTPD for Ammonia (346500 MTPA) and 1475 MTPD for Urea (486750 MTPD). With respect to NPK, “Pipe-reactor” with Process License & Basic Engineering from M/s Grande Parroise, France was incorporated in NPK B Train. By this and along with higher on-stream efficiency, the installed capacity was raised to 2550 MTPD (840000 MTPD).

Post-revamp

After overcoming initial teething troubles, the Ammonia & Urea Plants reached 87% and 83% capacity utilization levels in 1999-2000. To improve product quality and bring down product temperature before admitting into bagging streams, Prill Tower modification was carried out by Monsanto Enviro-Chem (MECSI), U.S.A. and a fluidized bed cooler (Prills Cooling System – PCS) was put into service.

Urea Plant achieved a record production of 473363 MT in 2006-07surpassing the previous best of 473032 MT in 2004-05. Specific consumption of feedstock has also come down over the years after process stabilization.

Performance since Revamp:


fooj.k / Description	Production			Cap.Uti%			Feedstock	Specific Energy Consumption
fooj.k / Description	Ammonia	Urea	NPK	Ammonia	Urea	NPK	Naphtha	Ammonia	Urea
ek=d Unit	MT	MT	MT	%	%	%	MT/MT	Gcal/MT	Gcal/MT
1998-1999	260062	327982	732911	75.1	67.4	87.3	0.826	11.661	9.579
1999-2000	301182	403760	811260	86.9	83.0	96.6	0.783	10.951	8.358
2000-2001	298000	401570	731447	86.0	82.5	87.1	0.791	10.711	8.396
2001-2002	216778	286891	573131	62.6	58.9	68.2	0.818	11.542	9.004
2002-2003	265011	401249	415044	76.5	82.4	49.4	0.797	11.099	8.358
2003-2004	259622	387678	428612	74.9	79.6	51.0	0.778	10.674	8.020
2004-2005	300886	473032	333475	86.8	97.2	39.7	0.757	10.411	7.766
2005-2006	227066	368500	208193	65.5	75.7	24.8	0.761	10.917	8.099
2006-2007	281312	473363	57130	81.2	97.2	6.8	0.764	10.758	7.908
2007-2008	265108	440499	35165	76.5	90.5	4.2	0.751	10.610	7.802
2008-2009	232300	405951	0	67.0	83.4	0.0	0.760	10.865	7.929
2009-2010	258150	436100	7335	74.5	89.6	0.9	0.777	10.789	7.834
2010-2011	280408	478834	40578	80.9	98.4	4.8	0.761	10.334	7.492