Economically feasible decarbonization of the Haber-Bosch process through supercritical CO2 Allam cycle integration

Abstract

The well-established Haber-Bosch (HB) process (industrial ammonia production) is a significant contributor to the world's carbon emissions as it is a major consumer of natural gas as well as being energy-intensive in general. This work addresses the challenge of decarbonizing the HB process in a novel way as it, for the first time, presents a conceptual process integration with a supercritical CO(2 & nbsp;)Allam power cycle, therefore transforming gaseous CO2 emissions into a valuable side product in a form of liquid CO2. Detailed process design and flowsheet simulation using Aspen Plus (R) was used as a basis for scale-up and techno-economic assessment of two cases (electrical grid dependent and independent). The results indicated that using this process design NH3 production reaches profitability at scales larger than 2 ton h(-1) to 5.4 ton h(-1) and at current global NH3 prices, the cost of manufacturing decrease, due to scale-up stabilizes at ~ 30 ton h(-1). Finally, this novel process integration achieves a significant reduction in gaseous CO2 emissions (compared to conventional HB process) of 68 % to 96 %, which indicates great potential for economically feasible green NH3.