The technological prospects of repurposing methane steam reformers into ammonia crackers for decarbonized H2 production

Natalia Realpe, Gontzal Lezcano, Shekhar R. Kulkarni, Salvador Sayas, Natalia Morlanes, Mohammad Rakib, Ragad Aldilaijan, Bandar Solami, Jorge Gascon and Pedro Castaño

Applied Energy, 2024, vol. 376, issue PB, No S0306261924016271

Abstract: The decarbonization of hydrogen production can be accelerated by repurposing existing methane steam reformers into ammonia crackers. Through kinetic modeling, reactor optimization, and process integration, we demonstrated the viability of repurposing industrial reformers into NH3 crackers using a Co-Ba-Ce extrudate catalyst. First, we combined an improved kinetic rate expression, validated through experiments, with a high-fidelity 2-D model to optimize the operation of a multi-tubular reactor with a fixed capacity of 7000 Nm3 h−1. Subsequently, we used heat integration techniques to integrate the reactor with supplementary and separation units. We proved the process energy efficiency to be 65.7% before heat integration and 75.3% for the integrated plant. The integrated, optimized plant results demonstrated the necessity of implementing an adiabatic pre-cracker, an element typically omitted in catalytic NH3 decomposition techno-economic models. Our findings underscore the importance of real-world constraints and operational aspects in designing and optimizing NH3 conversion processes.

Keywords: ammonia cracking; Reformer repurposing; H2 production; Process scale-up; gPROMS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261924016271
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:376:y:2024:i:pb:s0306261924016271

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2024.124244

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().