Beirut Explosion Prompts New Safety Procedures in China

Following on from the Beirut port explosion which caused at least 180 deaths on August 4, the Chinese government has now implemented a new round of safety inspections on hazardous chemicals.

The Beirut explosion was caused by the ignition of roughly 2,750 tonnes of Ammonium Nitrate unsafely stored at the port. The blast destroyed the country’s largest port, including silos containing the national grain reserve of Lebanon.

On August 7, the China National Energy Administration (CNEA) announced that certain companies will need to take on more stringent controls and safety precautions for these chemicals.

In August 2015, a series of explosions at a container storage facility in Tianjin port in China killed 173 people. The main explosion also involved the detonation of roughly 800 tonnes of Ammonium Nitrate.

According to the CNEA’s statement, all power companies should prioritise the safe storage and use of hazardous chemicals, and focus on ammonia, hydrogen, oil and gas as well as related equipment.

The CNEA also required power companies to accelerate the substitution of urea for ammonia in thermal power plants across China. It is the second time the CNEA has tasked the power industry with ammonia substitution since 2019.

On 9 April 2019, the CNEA published a document to strengthen the safety management of hazardous chemicals in the power industry. It stressed that thermal power plants using ammonia as a denitrification agent should accelerate the progress to replace this with urea.

China’s power industry consumed around 1.0 Mt of urea and 1.4 Mt of ammonia for denitrification in 2019, according to a CRU study. It is expected that urea demand for denitrification in the Chinese power industry will increase to 1.57 Mt by 2024, with a 9.2% CAGR during 2019-2024.