Techno-economic evaluation of sustainable ammonia production

Abstract

Worldwide ammonia production consumes 1-2% of the world's annual energy supply together with about 420 million tons of CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere. To avoid the impacts of conventional ammonia production on climate change and to reduce fossilfuel consumption, green ammonia production techniques using green hydrogen need to be evaluated. In the current work, techno-economic evaluation of two green ammonia production processes is investigated, where nitrogen is produced using an air separation unit (ASU), hydrogen is produced using proton exchange membrane electrolysis (PEME) and solid oxide electrolysis (SOE), and ammonia is produced using haber-bosch (HB) process. The techno-economic results of two green models (PEME-ASU-HB and SOE- ASU-HB) are compared with SMR-HB model, which referred to the conventional ammonia production process, in which hydrogen is produced using steam-methanereforming (SMR). All the models are simulated using Aspen Plus® and their technoeconomic analysis is carried out using DLR's in-house tool TEPET (techno-economic process evaluation tool).