What is synthetic ammonia industrial catalyst

The ammonia industry is of great significance for the development of agricultural production in the world and for the progress of human material civilization as a whole. Ammonia is one of the world's largest industrial synthetic chemicals, 85% of which is used to make chemical fertilizers, and the rest is used as raw material for the production of other chemical products, mainly for the manufacture of explosives and various chemical fibers and plastics. Ammonia is also used for a wide range of other industrial applications, for example, as a refrigerant in ice making, air conditioning, refrigeration and other systems.

Since the discovery and application of iron-based catalysts for ammonia synthesis, industrial methods have been used to fix nitrogen from air and thus produce ammonia cheaply. Since then, research and development of various catalysts have played an important role in complementing the refinement of the ammonia process. To date, catalysts are used in almost all processes in modern large ammonia plants.

Industrial ammonia is synthesized from nitrogen and hydrogen. Nitrogen is obtained from air and hydrogen from hydrogen-containing water or hydrocarbons (natural gas, naphtha, heavy oil), etc. The essence of the differences between the various industrial ammonia synthesis process routes lies in their hydrogen production routes, where hydrogen production by water electrolysis, water gas or partial oxidation of heavy oil is a non-catalytic process. Due to the high cost of these methods, since the successful development of natural gas or naphtha water vapor conversion catalysts, most of the modern large ammonia plants in the world use the hydrocarbon water vapor conversion method which is technologically advanced and economically reasonable. The whole process of this method consists of hydrogenation, desulfurization, conversion, transformation, methanation and ammonia synthesis, and all processes use catalysts.

At present, the catalysts used in ammonia production process mainly include raw material purification catalyst, hydrocarbon vapor conversion catalyst, methanation catalyst, CO conversion catalyst and synthesis catalyst. catalysts, CO conversion catalysts and synthetic helium catalysts.