Ammonia Synthesis

Process Design
Using Aspen HYSYS V8.0

Revised: Nov 21, 2012

2012 Aspen Technology, Inc. All rights reserved

 Background

In 1909 German chemist Fritz Haber developed a tabletop

process to produce ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen.
BASF purchased the process and assigned Carl Bosch to scale
up the process to industrial level production.
Haber and Bosch both received Nobel prizes for their work
concerning large scale, continuous flow, high-pressure
technology.

Fritz Haber Carl Bosch

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 Haber-Bosch Process

Reaction
2 + 32 23
Pressure 150-300 bar
Temperature 300-550C
Exothermic reaction, constant cooling is required to maintain
equilibrium constant
15% conversion per reactor pass
97% overall conversion after recycle

Raw materials
Hydrogen is produced from steam reforming of natural gas
Nitrogen comes from deoxygenated air

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Simplified Process

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 Design Goals

Create a simulation of the simplified ammonia synthesis process

using Aspen HYSYS
Assume a feed stream containing the following flows:
Hydrogen 5160 kgmole/hr
Nitrogen 1732 kgmole/hr
Methane 72 kgmole/hr
Argon 19 kgmole/hr
Carbon Monoxide 17 kmol/hr
Feed stream is available at 25.5 bar_g and 280C

Use the Conversion Reactor model in Aspen HYSYS, assume a

fractional conversion of 40% of nitrogen.

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 Copyright

Copyright 2012 by Aspen Technology, Inc. (AspenTech). All rights

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