The Billingham Manufacturing Plant is a large chemical works based in the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees, England. In agricultural terms, it is one of the most important factories in Britain.
Ammonia had first been made in Germany in 1913 by BASF at Oppau, near Ludwigshafen (the plant was destroyed in 1921 by the Oppau explosion). Ammonium compounds are used not only for fertilisers, but also explosives.
Billingham-on-Tees was a small village in 1917, when its Grange Farm was chosen to be the site of a large chemical works.
On 22 March 1918, the Minister of Munitions approved the site to be developed as a factory that would make ammonium nitrate.[1] It was initially known as the Government Nitrogen Factory – it fixed atmospheric nitrogen.
From 1929 the Bergius process was developed to hydrogenate carbon (coal) and make synthetic petrol, with production starting in 1935. This would be needed for aircraft several years later. The Fischer–Tropsch process was used by the Germans during the war to produce synthetic fuel from coal. The RAF's high-performance aircraft needed 100-octane fuel, which was only obtainable from hydrogenated fuels, such as that made at Billingham.[3] Another synthetic fuel (iso-octane) plant at Heysham in Lancashire was built in 1941, where it was thought safer. The synthetic fuel processes at Billingham and Heysham both relied on catalysts for the conversion of the coal synthesis gas to fuel. These catalysts were made in Clitheroe in a plant set up by the government as a shadow factory. Clitheroe was chosen for being in a part of the UK with the most cloud cover, which could help protect against German bombers.
The ammonia produced at Billingham used coal as the feedstock for many years. The coal-based process was complex and inefficient with many safety and environmental issues. In the 1950s ICI developed technology to convert naphtha to hydrogen by reacting with steam over a catalyst in tubes in a furnace. Four large steam reformers were built and these significantly improved the ammonia production process. The technology was successfully licensed by ICI to many plants around the world and the associated catalyst sales became an important ICI business. In the early 1960s ICI licensed ammonia technology from M. W. Kellogg, an American engineering company who had been developing single-stream continuous ammonia processes with capacity up to 550 tonnes per day. ICI ordered 3 plants, each with capacity of 900 tonnes per day and hence the world's largest. The new Kellogg technology synthesised ammonia at only 150 bar, about half that used in other processes, resulting in greatly improved energy efficiency. The new plants took some time to overcome teething problems with the new technology but eventually became the key part of the factory, which for many years was the world's largest ammonia production site. The Kellogg Low Pressure ammonia plants were eventually retired in the 1990s.
In the 1960s ICI developed new catalysts that would allow the production of methanol at much lower pressures than previously used. This led to ICI building the world's first Low Pressure methanol at Billingham in 1966, in a plant making 600 tonnes per day of methanol at only 50 bar and using hydrogen from the old steam reformer plants (which were no longer needed for ammonia production). A second and larger methanol plant was built in 1971. The methanol technology was licensed to more than 100 other companies (in conjunction with sales of ICI catalyst made at Clitheroe) and for many years more than half of the world's methanol was made with ICI technology and catalysts.
In the late 1960s, a plant was built to convert ammonia and nitric acid (made at Billingham from ammonia in separate plants) to ammonium nitrate, a popular fertiliser due to its high nitrogen content and sold using the Nitram brand name. A second Nitram plant was built in the 1970s.
In the 1970s, North Sea gas became available and the steam reformers at Billingham were converted from naphtha to natural gas feed. As one of the first and largest gas customers, ICI was able to negotiate a very favourable gas price which meant that the 1970s was a period of high profitability for the site.
A fourth large ammonia plant was built in the mid-1970s, with a capacity of 1500 tonnes per day. Ammonia 4 was designed with improved efficiency and reliability and is still operating in the 2020s.
In the late 1970s, ICI developed a fermentation process that converted methanol to artificial protein called Pruteen, intended to be used as animal feed.[4] A commercial production unit was built on Belasis Avenue, a short distance to the main Billingham site. The start of the new plant coincided with increases in gas and methanol prices and a drop in the cost of competing animal feeds which made commercial success difficult for the new plant. Further development work enabled the artificial protein to be used for human consumption using the brand name Quorn. ICI sold its interest in Quorn in 1993.
By the 1980s, the Billingham site was divided into 4 production groups – Ammonia Works (ammonia and methanol), Products Works (nitric acid and Nitram as well as other acids used to make compound "NPK" fertiliser), Oil Works and Cassel Works (whose main product is methyl methacrylate monomer, the precursor of Perspex).
In the early 1980s, British musician Eric Woolfson paid a visit to the factory having been invited by the then ICI chairman John Harvey-Jones. The first thing Woolfson saw was a kind of street full of pipes where nobody worked, with a sign which said Ammonia Avenue. It would end up being photographed for the front cover for The Alan Parsons Project's seventh studio album, which was also named after the place.[5]
The last major investment at Billingham was a large nitric acid plant with a capacity of 1000 tonnes per day that started operation in 1985.
In the 1990s the 3 LP ammonia plants were retired, along with the first Nitram plant and associated acid plants. This was mostly due to pressure of low-price competition from regions of the world with much lower costs of natural gas feed. The methanol production also stopped a little later for similar reasons.
In 1997 ICI sold the fertiliser production plants an Billingham and those at a similar, but smaller, production site at Severnside near Bristol to Terra for $340 million.
In 1999 ICI sold Cassel Works to Ineos and it subsequently became Lucite International.
In 2002 ICI sold the catalyst and technology licensing business that was headquartered at Billingham to Johnson Matthey for £267 million.
Second World War
In the Second World War, atomic research also took place on the site, under the codename Tube Alloys, whereby uranium hexafluoride was made. Plastics were also made on the site from 1934,[6] which were used in the construction of aircraft cockpits. The plant also made explosives, as synthetically originated nitrogen compounds (such as trinitrotoluene) all derive from ammonia, due to the immense energetic difficulty in splitting bonds in the nitrogen molecule.
Nuclear reactor
A TRIGAnuclear reactor was developed on the site from 1971 to 1988. Tracerco was developed from this operation, and ICI's Physics and Radioisotope Services.
CF Fertilisers
The plant was sold by ICI to Terra Nitrogen (UK), part of the Terra Nitrogen Company, in 1997. Terra formed a joint venture in 2006 with Kemira Growhow, who operated the UK's only other ammonium nitrate plant (in Cheshire) and the joint business used the Growhow name. In 2007 Yara, a Norwegian-based fertiliser company, took a controlling interest in Kemira Growhow. In 2010 CF Industries bought a 50% share of Growhow and in 2015 bought the remaining 50% from Yara.[7] GrowHow was rebranded to CF Fertilisers in November 2015.[8]
ICI plant seen from the town
Structure
It is sandwiched between Belasis Avenue (B1275) and the A1046 in the south-east of Billingham, close to the bank of the River Tees. The A19 runs nearby to the west.
Energy
Natural gas is supplied at between 45 and 65 bar. The site uses around 1% of the UK's natural gas.[citation needed] Electricity used to come from its own power station and also from the former North Tees Power Station (which closed in 1983), but is now supplied from the National Grid.
Plant seen from Saltholme Marshes near Haverton Hill
Function
It fixates nitrogen, a highly energy-thirsty process, by converting it to ammonia via the Haber process, also known as the Haber–Bosch process. From ammonia, the vast majority of fertilisers are made, leading to protein formation in plants and then animals. Naturally occurring sodium nitrate or potassium nitrate are also used in fertilisers.
Ammonia is an inorganic chemical compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula NH3. A stable binary hydride and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinctive pungent smell. Biologically, it is a common nitrogenous waste, and it contributes significantly to the nutritional needs of terrestrial organisms by serving as a precursor to fertilisers. Around 70% of ammonia produced industrially is used to make fertilisers in various forms and composition, such as urea and diammonium phosphate. Ammonia in pure form is also applied directly into the soil.
The Haber process, also called the Haber–Bosch process, is the main industrial procedure for the production of ammonia. It converts atmospheric nitrogen (N2) to ammonia (NH3) by a reaction with hydrogen (H2) using finely divided iron metal as a catalyst:
A fertilizer or fertiliser is any material of natural or synthetic origin that is applied to soil or to plant tissues to supply plant nutrients. Fertilizers may be distinct from liming materials or other non-nutrient soil amendments. Many sources of fertilizer exist, both natural and industrially produced. For most modern agricultural practices, fertilization focuses on three main macro nutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) with occasional addition of supplements like rock flour for micronutrients. Farmers apply these fertilizers in a variety of ways: through dry or pelletized or liquid application processes, using large agricultural equipment, or hand-tool methods.
Ammonium nitrate is a chemical compound with the formula NH4NO3. It is a white crystalline salt consisting of ions of ammonium and nitrate. It is highly soluble in water and hygroscopic as a solid, although it does not form hydrates. It is predominantly used in agriculture as a high-nitrogen fertilizer.
Carl Bosch was a German chemist and engineer and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry. He was a pioneer in the field of high-pressure industrial chemistry and founder of IG Farben, at one point the world's largest chemical company.
Teesside is a built-up area around the River Tees in North East England, split between County Durham and North Yorkshire. The area contains the towns of Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees, Billingham, Redcar, Thornaby-on-Tees, and Ingleby Barwick. Teesside's economy was once dominated by heavy manufacturing until deindustrialisation in the latter half of the 20th century. Chemical production continues to contribute significantly to Teesside's economy.
Billingham is a town and civil parish in County Durham, England. The town is on the north side of the River Tees and is governed as part of the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees unitary authority. It had a population of 35,165 in the 2011 Census.
Synthetic fuel or synfuel is a liquid fuel, or sometimes gaseous fuel, obtained from syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, in which the syngas was derived from gasification of solid feedstocks such as coal or biomass or by reforming of natural gas.
The Oppau explosion occurred on September 21, 1921, when approximately 4,500 tonnes of a mixture of ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate fertilizer stored in a tower silo exploded at a BASF plant in Oppau, now part of Ludwigshafen, Germany, killing 500–600 people and injuring about 2,000 more.
Ammonia production takes place worldwide, mostly in large-scale manufacturing plants that produce 183 million metric tonnes of ammonia (2021) annually. Leading producers are China (31.9%), Russia (8.7%), India (7.5%), and the United States (7.1%). 80% or more of ammonia is used as fertilizer. Ammonia is also used for the production of plastics, fibres, explosives, nitric acid, and intermediates for dyes and pharmaceuticals. The industry contributes 1% to 2% of global CO 2. Between 18–20 Mt of the gas is transported globally each year.
Sable Chemical Industries Limited is the sole manufacturer of ammonium nitrate (NH4NO3) in Zimbabwe.
CF Industries Holdings, Inc. is an American manufacturer and distributor of agricultural fertilizers, including ammonia, urea, and ammonium nitrate products. The company is based in Northbrook, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, and was founded in 1946 as the Central Farmers Fertilizer Company. For its first 56 years, it was a federation of regional agricultural supply cooperatives. CF then demutualized, and became a publicly traded company.
The history of fertilizer has largely shaped political, economic, and social circumstances in their traditional uses. Subsequently, there has been a radical reshaping of environmental conditions following the development of chemically synthesized fertilizers.
Calcium ammonium nitrate or CAN, also known as nitro-limestone or nitrochalk, is a widely used inorganic fertilizer, accounting for 4% of all nitrogen fertilizer used worldwide in 2007.
The history of the Haber process begins with the invention of the Haber process at the dawn of the twentieth century. The process allows the economical fixation of atmospheric dinitrogen in the form of ammonia, which in turn allows for the industrial synthesis of various explosives and nitrogen fertilizers, and is probably the most important industrial process developed during the twentieth century.
The Leuna works in Leuna, Saxony-Anhalt, is one of the biggest chemical industrial complexes in Germany. The site, now owned jointly by companies such as TotalEnergies, BASF, Linde plc, and DOMO Group, covers 13 km2 and produces a very wide range of chemicals and plastics.
Ostchem Holding is a holding company that unites a group of chemical factories and supporting companies. In its turn Ostchem is a part of bigger Group DF that unites several separate enterprises and other holding companies and is owned by Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash.
Deepak Fertilisers and Petrochemicals Corporation Limited (DFPCL) is an Indian manufacturer of industrial and agricultural chemicals, crop nutrients, and fertilisers.
Manufacturing in New Zealand contributed $23 billion (12%) of the country's gross domestic product and directly employed 241,000 people in 2017, while manufactured goods made up 52% of the country's exports by value. The food and beverage subsector alone contributed 32% of manufacturing's GDP and 71% of exports.
Heysham oil refinery was located between Heysham and Middleton on the Heysham peninsula, Lancashire. It was built during the Second World War to produce high octane fuel for combat aircraft. It was later adapted to refine crude oil with a processing capacity of two million tonnes per year and was in operation from 1948 to 1976. It worked in conjunction with a chemical plant which produced ammonium nitrate fertilizer and other products, using feedstocks from the refinery.
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