Sandvik (Stockholm, Sweden) and Stambicarbon (Sittard, The Netherlands) have teamed up on a project that aims to recycle high-alloy steel using a buy-back solution that decommissions old equipment in customers’ urea plants and retrieves the recyclable material. According to Sandvik, buying scrap from its customers and turning it into new premium products will help the company reach its goal of 90% circularity by 2030.
Sandvik and Stambicarbon first joined forces over 30 years ago when they developed a material that could withstand the harsh environment of the fertilizer industry. Now with their current buy-back scheme, the two companies will empower fertilizer customers to replace equipment parts at their plants. They are also exploring ways to standardize collecting and recycling high-quality metals, as well as inform other businesses on how to improve their asset management and circularity.
Another benefit to the buy-back program is that it will help fertilizer customers recoup their investment in equipment that has become obsolete or worn down. “At Sandvik, we have a commitment to using engineering and innovation to help us advance towards a more sustainable business model,” says Mats W. Lundberg, sustainable business manager at Sandvik Materials Technology. “Sustainability provides an opportunity for new ways of thinking and working—but this doesn’t mean everything needs to be new. By reconsidering how we manage our existing resources, we can incentivize our customers to recycle their used equipment, while improving our own efficiency.”
For its part, Stambicarbon recognizes the advantages of the circular economy. “We see this as a valuable addition to our full lifecycle service, one that will certainly separate us from our competitors,” says Joey Dobrée, product portfolio manager at Stambicarbon. “Helping our clients take the hassle out of the disposal of old equipment, so wrapping this service into our proposals for replacement equipment benefits everyone involved.”
One of the key problems a urea plant faces is corrosion, as the ammonium carbamate that the method produces can damage its reactors and disrupt the entire process. This consideration likely played a role in one of the first purchases made by the buy-back program in late 2019: a heat exchanger from a urea plant in the Netherlands. Coincidentally, this heat exchanger was built using Sandvik’s Safurex tubes, which use a high-alloy duplex stainless steel that was specifically designed to withstand corrosion from carbamate solutions.
Source: Sandvik, www.materials.sandvik/en.