Synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen
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Are there any projects that currently use pure nitrogen and pure hydrogen to directly synthesize ammonia? Is it economical? Is it feasible? Please ask the friends from Sichuan to help answer
I’ve never heard of it; I guess it might not work. The cost must be too high.
Pure nitrogen and pure hydrogen in an ideal state are very difficult to achieve in chemical manufacturing, and the cost is also extremely high; a purity level of 9999 is already considered quite high. What LZ mentioned is probably referring to laboratory conditions.
It is estimated that even laboratories find it difficult to achieve this, and large-scale industrial production is likely to remain a distant dream.
This issue isn’t entirely unfounded; I once read an article stating that hydropower stations can be built on suitable rivers, and the electricity generated there can be used to electrolyze water to produce H2, which is then used to manufacture synthetic ammonia. After checking: the electricity consumption required to produce 1 cubic meter of hydrogen through water electrolysis is 4.5–5.5 kWh, while the cost of hydroelectric power generation is 4–9 cents per kilowatt-hour ； Based on this calculation, the cost of hydrogen required to produce 1 ton of ammonia is around 640 yuan, which is much lower than that of other methods. So far, however, there have been no reports of plants for producing synthetic ammonia using this method having been built.
You have only calculated the cost of hydrogen here; what about nitrogen? Your estimate of the gap is way too high! It is not very feasible to produce ammonia using pure hydrogen and pure nitrogen, as the cost of obtaining pure hydrogen (99.999%) is extremely high, and the same is true for nitrogen!
Come on, how can the cost of producing hydrogen through water electrolysis be so low? If it’s that low, would anyone still worry about energy?
What if both hydrogen and nitrogen are very inexpensive to obtain? If hydrogen is purified using styrene off-gases, nitrogen is sourced from large-scale air separation units. Applying such costs in practice, it’s unclear whether the manufacturing technology is already mature I think synthesizing it directly should be more environmentally friendly; **it should also be supported
It is feasible; companies have been producing it for several years now. Nitrogen is extracted from air, while hydrogen is obtained from the exhaust gases generated in the production of chlor-alkali products and sodium cyanide, enabling circular production
The question is well-posed. However, when it comes to producing synthetic ammonia, there are two key factors: the technical feasibility and the production costs, as well as the product’s competitiveness in the market. Excessively high costs make it impossible to compete in the market; no one would engage in a business that results in losses. Apart from research purposes, financial support is also necessary.