Abstract
As economies advance towards decarbonization, industry follows suit. The ammonia (NH3) sector heavily relies on the energy- and carbon-intensive Haber-Bosch (HB) process, which accounts for nearly 2% of global CO2 emissions due to its reliance on fossil fuels. Emerging technologies are paving the way for fully renewable NH3 production, although the most mature green process still relies on the HB process, entirely replacing fossil fuels with electrolytic green hydrogen (H2). This work introduces the first developments towards the gradual incorporation of green H2 and air-separated nitrogen (N2) into a conventional NH3 production plant. Using Aspen Plus® V14 for modelling and simulation of Steam Methane Reforming (SMR), different scenarios incorporating 0 to 40 % of these alternative feedstocks were analyzed. An economic objective function is used in each scenario's optimization. To improve green H2 incorporation and ensure operational constraints were met, the simulations used an adapted SMR section proposed in previous work. Preliminary results in the development of this methodology indicate that at 40 % green H2 and 40 % air-separated N2 incorporations, a 29.4 % reduction in carbon emissions was achieved, along with 30.1 % natural gas savings and a 35 % decreased in conventional operational costs (without green H2 and air-separated N2 costs) compared to the base case, where no alternative feedstocks were used. At current market prices, in the same scenario, incorporating alternative feedstocks can increase total operational costs by 52 %.