(71b) A New Conceptual Design on Natural Gas Comprehensive Utilization for Simultaneous Power, Ammonia, Fertilizer, and LNG Productions with Inherent Carbon Capture

Natural gas is the one of the most promising large-scale alternative energy/material resources in the world, which needs to be comprehensively utilized to satisfy the increasing demand on global energy/fertilizer consumptions with carbon sequestrations. This paper, based on our previous work [1, 2], has developed a novel conceptual design of an industrial complex to simultaneously generate power, ammonia, nitrogen fertilizer, and LNG; meanwhile, with its inherent carbon capture process to produce the pipeline-grade CO₂ product for many potential uses. It employs natural gas and air as the major feeds, and retrofit five industrial process sub systems including (i) an air separation unit (ASU); (ii) an Allam-cycle power plant (ACPP); (iii) an ammonia plant (AP); (iv) a urea fertilizer plant (UFP), and (v) an LNG plant (LNGP). Through optimally integrating energy/material streams among five subsystems, this new complex can simultaneously produce electricity, ammonia, urea, LNG, pure N2, and pipeline-ready CO2 products efficiently and effectively with the eco-friendly manufacturing ways that would prevent CO2 and NOx emissions. The newly developed complex has been modeled and examined through a commercial simulator, and its exciting economic and environmental performances have also been evaluated and demonstrated. The study has a great industrial potential with salient economic, environmental, and societal benefits, which could be further optimized in the future with possible interested industrial partners.

Keywords: Allam-cycle power plant; urea fertilizer plant; LNG plant; inherent carbon capture; process modeling

Reference:

1. Fernandes, D.; Wang, S.; Xu, Q.; Buss, R.; Chen, D. Process and carbon footprint analyses of the Allam cycle power plant integrated with an air separation unit. Clean Technologies, 1, 325-340, 2019a.
2. Fernandes, D.; Wang, S.; Xu, Q.; Chen, D. Dynamic simulations of the Allam cycle power plant integrated with an air separation unit. International Journal of Chemical Engineering, 1-10, 2019b.