Conceptual Design and Process Feasibility Analysis of a Novel Ammonia Synthesis Process by Efficient Heat Integration

Ammonia synthesis by hydrogen and nitrogen is an important pathway for ammonia production. However, design of an energy efficient and environmentally friendly route for ammonia synthesis is still a challenge and needs to be overcome. Performance and economic feasibility of ammonia synthesis loop processes significantly depend on not only configuration arrangement but also on operating conditions. Thus, a novel ammonia synthesis route with exergy recovery and heat integration was designed by process simulation in this work. The energy and material balance of the proposed process was investigated and compared with the conventional process. The heat integration performance and its influence on total energy consumption were also evaluated. The investigation results showed that the energy consumption of the proposed process was reduced to 16.72 MW, which equaled 38.18% of the conventional process with the feed natural gas of both processes set at 0.083 kmol/s. Approximately 57.9 MW could be recovered in the proposed ammonia synthesis process by heat exchanger networks.