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ammonia production full report

MALAVIYA NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY JAIPUR
DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Submitted to Submitted by
Mr. RAJEEV KUMAR DOHARE Gajanand Pilaniya
LECTURER 2008UCH123
DEPT.OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING 4thSem (B. Tech 2nd yr.)

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Introduction
The name ammonia for the nitrogen - hydrogen compound NH3 is derived from the oasis Ammon (today Siwa) in Egypt, where Ammonia salts were already known in ancient times and also the Arabs were aware of ammonium carbonate. For a long time only the “sal ammoniacum” was available. Free ammonia was prepared much later.
In nature ammonia, NH3 occurs almost exclusively in the form of ammonium salts. Natural formation of ammonia is primarily by decomposition of nitrogen-containing organic materials or through volcanic activity. Ammonium chloride can deposite at the edges of smoldering, exposed coal beds (already observed in Persia before 900 A. D.). Similar deposits can be found at volcanoes, for example, Vesuvius and Etna in Italy. Ammonia and its oxidation products, which combine to form ammonium nitrate and nitrite, are produced from nitrogen and water vapor by electrical discharges in the atmosphere. These ammonium salts supply a significant proportion of the nitrogen needed by growing plants when eventually deposited on the earth’s surface. Ammonia and its salts are also byproducts of commercial processing (gasification, coking) of fuels such as coal, lignite and peat Other sources of nitrogen compounds are
exhausts from industrial, power-generation, and automotive sectors.
The development of the synthesis of ammonia from its elements is a landmark in the history of industrial chemistry. But this process did not only solve a fundamental problem in securing our food supply by economic production of
fertilizers in quantity but also opened a new phase of industrial chemistry by laying the foundations for subsequent high-pressure processes like methanol synthesis, Oxo synthesis, Fischer - Tropsch process, coal liquefaction, and Reppe reactions. The technical experience and process know-how gained thereby had an enormous influence on the further development of chemical engineering, metallurgy, process control, fabrication and design of reactors, apparatus, and of course on the theory and practice of heterogeneous catalysis.
Today ammonia is the second largest synthetic chemical product; more than 90 % of world consumption is manufactured from the elements nitrogen and hydrogen in a catalytic process originally developed by FRITZ HABER and CARL BOSCH using a promoted iron catalyst discovered by ALWIN MITTASCH. Since the early days there has been no fundamental change in this process. Even today the synthesis section of every ammonia plant has the same basic configuration as the first plants.