Develop Soda Ash And Clean Goods, Pupuk Indonesia: Fertilizer Factory Efficiency Remains A Priority

JAKARTA - PT Pupuk Indonesia (Persero) will develop soda ash and clean ammonia in order to implement an environmentally friendly circular economy.

"In the future, what will it look like? We will certainly continue to do the efficiency and optimization of the fertilizer factory as a priority. Then we will also develop a circular economy, namely producing soda ash," said Director of Portfolio and Business Development of Pupuk Indonesia Jamsaton Nababan as reported by ANTARA, Thursday, July 4.

Jamsaton said, Indonesia is still importing soda ash of around 1 million tons per year.

"The raw material for this soda ash is CO2, one of which is, so when our factory makes ammonia that produces CO2 emissions, we absorb the emissions to become raw material for soda ash," he said.

According to him, Pupuk Indonesia is recycling the CO2 emissions to become the raw material for soda ash products.

Thus, continued Jamsaton, this can substitute Indonesia's soda ash imports of around 1 million tons per year.

"We built two factories, one in Bontang, East Kalimantan and another in Gresik, East Java. So that later with these two factories, we will absorb quite a lot of CO2 emissions that we produce," he said.

In addition to soda ash, his party will develop clean ammonia.

Clean ammonia consists of green ammonia and blue ammonia.

For the green ammonia, Pupuk Indonesia will electrolyse water into hydrogen and then convert it into ammonia.

In the future, he said, if the economic scale has entered, Pupuk Indonesia will no longer need gas and only need water and electricity from new renewable energy such as geothermal or hydropower.

"The current economic scale of technology is still not included if we compare it with gas or fossil energy. But we have confidence that technology will develop so that there will be a balance point where the economy can enter," said Jamsaton.

Pupuk Indonesia akan mengembangkan green ammonia di Aceh, dan hasilnya yakni green ammonia dapat dipeksor atau digunakan bagi kebutuhan di dalam negeri.

Furthermore, Pupuk Indonesia will also develop a blue ammonia where for this blue ammonia, CO2 emissions will be put into empty reservoirs.

In developing this blue ammonia, Pupuk Indonesia collaborated with Chevron in Kalimantan to find empty reservoirs.

Then in West Java, Pupuk Indonesia also collaborates with Mitsubishi and Pertamina.

"So we have prepared ourselves to enter the circular economy," said Jamsaton Nababan.