Title : A novel design for ammonia production
Abstract:
Haber-Bosch is one of the most common petrochemical processes to generate ammonia from synthesis gas. Unfortunately, the process is usually very expensive, because it is run in high pressures (approximately 220 bar). In this work, a novel dense Pd-Ag membrane reactor is proposed to enable methane reforming and ammonia production to be carried out simultaneously. The Ni based and Iron based catalysts are used for methane reforming and ammonia production respectively. The produced hydrogen from methane reforming permeates to react with nitrogen for ammonia generation.
The coupling process is modelled to evaluate the performance of the proposed design. To obtain the mass and the energy balance equations, a differential element was considered along the reactor. The model was considered one-dimensional and steady and all the conditions are in according to operating conditions. In order to solve the governing equations, Modified Rosenbrock method (ode23s) in MATLAB software is used. The results of the modelling show that 15% of nitrogen conversion could be achieved from the proposed design at the pressure of 10 bar. This novel process is an appropriate alternative for avoiding, the extra costs of Haber-Bosch process.
