Published July 1980
Energy has always been the major element in the production cost of ammonia. The continued growth of the ammonia industry in most of the industrial countries almost certainly depends on the development of new processes that consume significantly less energy than existing processes do, and which are reasonably competitive with conventional processes from the standpoint of capital investment.
Faced with this challenge, ammonia plant contractors have developed improvements in various parts of the ammonia process that offer the promise of reducing either energy consumption or capital investment, or both. This supplemental report concerns only processes that directly or indirectly affect the ammonia synthesis loop (excluding catalyst development). One conventional-pressure and one low-pressure process are quantitatively evaluated.
