The Urea plant of the Chemical Company of Qinghai Salt Lake Industry Group Co. uses the off-gas from the acetylene production applying natural gas partial oxidation process as feedstock and has a urea production capacity of 330,000 t/a. This urea plant utilizes CO2 stripping of traditional modification process.
Most of the personnel operating a newly built urea plant are not so experienced in the process operation of the HP scrubber. Various abnormal situations might occur during the startup, shutdown and even during normal production of the plant. In view of this, the operational analyses are made on the various process operation modes of the HP scrubber like normal operation, start up and shut down operation and several other troubleshooting situations.
Corresponding countermeasures have been proposed through analyzing the process disturbances under different operating conditions, which is not only a way to determine a operation procedure, but also an approach for exploring optimum process conditions in the future. Energy-saving and consumption reduction as well as safety of human and equipment can be realized only through constant optimization of operating conditions.

2010_12_Yun_Qinghai_UreaKnowHow.com_HP_scrubber_Operational_Experiences.pdf