Regarding the issue of nitrogen recovery rate
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In petrochemical plants, there are many studies on the overall sulfur recovery rate from a plant-wide perspective. Have there been any studies on the overall nitrogen recovery rate, that is, the nitrogen contained in crude oil being converted into ammonia and related products for reuse during subsequent processing processes? A small amount of nitrogen remains unremoved and is present in the products; the rest ends up in wastewater, flue gas, and petroleum coke. What is generally the overall nitrogen recovery rate in petrochemical plants?
I’ve only heard of the denitrification rate; there has really been no research on the nitrogen recovery rate! Perhaps nitrogen emissions focus only on nitrogen dioxide and ammonia nitrogen, which leads to the neglect of studying the recovery rate of nitrogen. I think this is a good question.
Emission regulations for sulfur are quite strict, while those for nitrogen are relatively lenient; once they become equally strict, people will start to conduct research on it! Has President Hu taken action ahead of schedule?
Nitrogen recovery is available, but it has been shut down due to cost issues
Currently, there is little focus on the issue of nitrogen recovery rates. I believe there are two possible reasons for this: Firstly, I think it is mainly due to policy factors that result in a lack of motivation among manufacturers to conduct research on nitrogen recovery. In terms of the mechanisms by which nitrogen oxides are formed in exhaust gases, these can be categorized as thermal-type, rapid-type, and fuel-type. Considering the applications of downstream products from refining companies, thermal-type nitrogen oxides seem to play a dominant role. The contribution of nitrogen oxides contained in fuels to the emissions of nitrogen oxides in exhaust gases is lower than that of thermal-type nitrogen oxides; therefore, current fuel standards do not impose any restrictions on the nitrogen oxide content in fuels. Secondly, nitrogen in crude oil exists in various forms, and nitrogen from the air is inevitably introduced throughout the refining process, which poses many challenges to the study of nitrogen balance across the entire process and increases the difficulty of such studies. But the most important factor is that, given the current causes of environmental air pollution in our country, sulfur dioxide has a greater impact on the atmosphere than nitrogen oxides; therefore, **at present, more efforts are being made to control sulfur dioxide than nitrogen oxides. Personal opinion, for reference only.