What is the raw material used to produce ammonia synthesis?

Principles and basis for determining the raw material route to build large-scale chemical plants must have a reliable source of raw materials. The choice of raw material route is the basis for the design of ammonia plant, the principle of raw material selection is high quality and low price, long-term stable supply.

Industrial production of synthesis ammonia raw gas is hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon monoxide, can be produced from all the raw materials for the production of syngas, generally using solid raw materials, coal, coke, liquid raw materials, liquid hydrocarbons, naphtha, heavy oil, etc., gas raw materials, natural gas, oilfield gas, refinery gas, coke oven gas, etc., at present, oil, coal or natural gas as a raw material for the production of syngas production process is relatively mature, there are industrialised units in operation around the world.

Before the 1950s, most of the ammonia industries in the world used coal, coke or coke oven gas as raw materials. In the 1970s, the world entered a period of great development of petrochemicals, developed countries almost abandoned the research and development of coal chemical industry, and then, due to the development of oil and natural gas ammonia production process, gradually replaced coal and coke. From the technical point of view, natural gas is the most ideal raw material among the above. The main reason is that natural gas and naphtha as raw materials for ammonia production process technology is simple, low cost, easy to large-scale. Internationally, natural gas and crude oil are mainly used as raw materials, of which natural gas accounts for about 90%.

Since oil and natural gas resources are relatively scarce, but coal resources are relatively abundant, the project adopts the raw material route of producing synthetic ammonia from coal in view of energy structure, source and raw material price.

Coal as raw material to produce ammonia, each production process technology has different requirements for coal quality, ammonia synthesis plant raw material route selection should also be based on the characteristics of various coal to choose a different production process for economic comparisons in order to determine the price of raw materials, production costs as low as possible, but also as low as possible to reduce the investment, that is to say, raw material routes should be selected at the same time with the selection of process routes.