Biomass Based Sustainable Ammonia Production: Digestion vs Gasification

[EN]The synthesis of ammonia is one of the most important chemical processes in the world. The Haber–Bosch process has predominantly been used to synthesize ammonia over the last decades. However, it uses coal or natural gas as raw materials. In this work, the path to produce ammonia from biomass ha...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Sánchez García, Antonio, Martín Martín, Mariano, Vega Cruz, Pastora Isabel
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión enviada para evaluación y publicación
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Salamanca (USAL)
Repositorio:GREDOS. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Salamanca
OAI Identifier:oai:gredos.usal.es:10366/153985
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10366/153985
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Ammonia
Biomass
Gasification
Inorganic carbon compounds
Water
3310.05 Ingeniería de Procesos
Descripción
Sumario:[EN]The synthesis of ammonia is one of the most important chemical processes in the world. The Haber–Bosch process has predominantly been used to synthesize ammonia over the last decades. However, it uses coal or natural gas as raw materials. In this work, the path to produce ammonia from biomass has been evaluated and optimized. Thermochemical and biochemical routes have been compared. Three alternative gasification technologies have been considered together with anaerobic digestion. For the reforming stage, two alternatives have been compared: autothermal and steam reforming. Finally, ammonia is synthesized in a multibed reactor with two different configurations: direct or indirect cooling. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear program but solved as a set of 14 nonlinear programs. Indirect gasifier followed by steam methane reforming and direct cooling ammonia reactor is the path that presents the best performance with an ammonia production cost of about 380 €/t. The biochemical route shows worse results to ammonia due to the low yield to biogas and, therefore, to ammonia.