Production comes to halt at Jamuna fertiliser again
Production came to a halt again at Jamuna Fertiliser Company Limited (JFCL) at Tarakandi under Sarishabari upazila of Jamalpur yesterday due to technical glitches.
Regular fluctuation of gas pressure is posing serious threat to the biggest plant and its costly equipment, sources at the plant said.
Mohammad Ahsanuzzaman, managing director (MD) of JFCL, told this correspondent that urea production was suspended at 11.15am after detection of a mechanical fault at its ammonium section.
The engineers of JFCL are repairing the fault and production will resume soon after the gas pressure gets normal, he added.
JFCL supplies urea to 20 districts including 16 northern through its 1,823 dealers since the unit was set up in 1991.
Sources said urea production at the fertiliser unit faced suspension for 180 days on 11 occasions since January this year due to frequent technical glitches and low gas pressure and lack of overhauling.
Earlier, production suspended on the 1700MT production powered JFCL on October 11 after detection of a leakage on reactor in its urea plant. After repairing, fertiliser production resumed after 17 days.
On January 1, production came to a halt due to low gas pressure and later the unit resumed production after gas pressure came to normal on January 3.
Production halted again on February 16 after detection of a leakage on boiler in its urea plant and production resumed on February 22.
Production at JFCL faced another jolt on March 27 after detection of another leakage on boiler and production resumed later on March 31.
In the face of acute gas crisis, urea production at JFCL halted again on April 2 and later government directed the authorities suspend production for an indefinite period.
Meantime, an overhauling of the unit took place from April 20 by spending Tk 16 crore. Though the job ended on May 31, JFCL failed to resume production due to short supply of gas.
The gas pressure came to normal after 110 days and the company resumed production on July 16.
However, production suspended again a day later after detection of a mechanical fault in its urea plant and it resumed on July 21 after a repair work.
Production stopped again on August 13 due to low gas pressure and resumed on August 16. After only two days, it returned to square one again due to lack of gas. After closure of 34 days, urea production resumed at JFCL on September 21.
JFCL officials said at least 370 PSI gas pressure is required to produce 1,700MT of urea a day while at present the unit cannot produce more than 482 MT with a gas pressure of only 240 PSI.
As a result, the company is now uncertain to hit its production target of 4,80,000 MT in the current FY (2010-11), company sources said expressing fear of short supply of urea in the upcoming boro season.
On the other hand, regular fluctuation of gas pressure has been causing technical glitches at the urea plant and also damaging of its costly equipments, company sources said.
JFCL MD Ahsanuzzaman told The Daily Star that the plant might face a massive disaster (damage) any moment for running with very low gas pressure.
"I have already informed the matter to the appropriate authorities through four letters in the last four days," he added.
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