A conceptual investigation for the simultaneous production of gasoline and ammonia in thermally coupled reactors

Abstract

Abstract In recent years, there have been many efforts to improve the catalytic naphtha reforming, due to the importance of this process in the industry. In this research, simultaneous production of gasoline and ammonia in the thermally coupled reactor is studied theoretically. It is considered that the naphtha reforming process as the endothermic reaction takes place in the shell side of the reactor and ammonia synthesis process as the exothermic reaction takes place in the tube side of the reactor. This configuration leads to an increase in thermal efficiency and reduces operational costs due to the elimination of interstage heaters for catalytic naphtha reforming and reducing of thermal load of condensers for ammonia synthesis unit. In the current research, the results of this new configuration have been compared with results of the conventional naphtha reactors. Obtained results of simulation show an acceptable increase in production yield of the aromatics in reformate compared to the conventional naphtha reforming reactors. On the other hand, the conversion of nitrogen is reduced compared to the conventional ammonia synthesis process slightly. The effect of parameters such as the inlet temperature of the endothermic side, the inlet molar flow rate of the exothermic side, number of tubes and hydrogen to hydrocarbon molar ratio in the naphtha feed on the system performance have been investigated. As well as, some adjustable parameters have been optimized with genetic algorithm method to determine the best solution for this suggested system.