Urea – one of the most manufactured chemicals – is a widely used fertiliser because of its high nitrogen content. Urea is, however, also used as an AdBlue additive and as a basic substance for the chemical industry in the manufacture of urea resins for adhesives, impregnation agents and insulants. Nowadays, urea is mainly industrially manufactured from ammonia and carbon dioxide. In a high-pressure reactor these react to ammonium carbamate, which slowly breaks down as an intermediate product into urea and water in the appropriate conditions. Two thirds of the carbon dioxide which is captured beforehand during hydrogen production is thus consumed in the production of urea. Process variants differ in how the ammonium carbamate is broken down, the removal and recovery of carbon dioxide and ammonia as well as how the urea is processed. One thing all the modern industrial processes have in common is that the excess gases are fed back into the reactor by way of stripping processes. Lastly, the urea solution is concentrated in a downdraught vaporisersuited.

KROHNE has wide-ranging experience in fertiliser process technology and plays its part in efficient and safe production processes, not least with its wide range of sophisticated flowmeters – all of which are suited to the specific requirements - including electromagnetic flowmeters for complex process applications with aggressive liquids at high temperatures, or Coriolis mass flow devices for media with a low flow velocity. Our ultrasonic flowmeters are not limited in the way that turbine flowmeters or conventional gas flowmeters typically are. And most of our measuring devices also feature numerous diagnostics functions with many digital communication options.