CBM Review

Covering the global coalbed methane, coal gasification and coal-to-X industries.

Coal-to-ammonia conversion in Asia

Tufail Ahmad, KBR Technology, US, discusses the use of low-rank coal as a feedstock
for ammonia plants in Asia.

ith the increasing shortage of natural gas and

crude oil in Asia, coal provides a viable alternate
feedstock for energy and chemicals. According to
the US Energy Information Administration, the
current and projected world prices (nominal 2007 US$) of
low-rank coal are significantly lower than the competitor fossil
fuels. This feedstock differential cost between low-rank coal and
natural gas is the key business opportunity driving the use of
low-rank coal as an economical replacement for natural gas in an
existing (or new) ammonia plant.
Over 900 billion t of proven coal reserves are estimated
worldwide with Asia, including Russia, China, India and
Indonesia, accounting for 370 billion t. More than 50% of the
reserves both globally and in Asia are cheap low-rank and
high-ash coals. With rapidly depleting oil and gas reserves, these
coals present an attractive alternative option for making ammonia
in Asia. KBR has a proprietary coal gasification technology using
the Transport Reactor Integrated Gasifier (TRIG) suitable for
low-rank coals.
This paper discusses how TRIG can be integrated with a
conventional KBR ammonia synthesis loop. Coal feedstock
options for an existing ammonia plant using TRIG will be
presented and coal gasification technology for new ammonia
plants will also be discussed.

CURRENT NATURAL GAS SHORTAGE IN AMMONIA

PLANTS

In Asia, the current natural gas supply does not meet the 100%
feed stock requirements for existing ammonia/urea plants. It is
now time to replace natural gas with coal-derived syngas. Coal
can be transported from the mine to the existing ammonia plant
and gasified to produce syngas, further purified and fed to an
ammonia synthesis loop. Alternatively, the coal could be
transported to a centralised gasification facility that supplies
syngas and/or hydrogen to multiple ammonia and other
chemical plants.

If coal can be economically transported from the mine to the

ammonia plant, there is no driver to first produce synthetic
natural gas (SNG) from hydrogen and carbon monoxide before
converting it back to hydrogen and carbon monoxide via
reforming. The coal-to-SNG-to-ammonia option would come into
play only when one of more the following situations occurred:
ll The coal mine is remote from the ammonia plant site.
ll Transportation costs are high.
ll The mine owner/operator is interested in monetising
lowrank coal reserves into high-value SNG instead of
selling the lower-value coal.
The typical scenario here would be for the mine operator
and/or other investors to place a large coal-to-SNG facility near
the mine mouth. The SNG is then fed into an existing natural gas
distribution system, where it is sent to multiple end users,
including, new or existing ammonia plants facing high prices or
limited supply of natural gas.
In most places in Asia, logistics is a serious problem. There are
current plants that run on natural gas, but have access to cheap
coal: for example, some of the Indonesian plants. In one coal-rich
area (Liaohe in China), KBR used the KRES reforming
exchanger process to reduce the fuel natural gas consumption of
the ammonia plant and replace it with the much cheaper, locally
available coal.

A TYPICAL CONFIGURATION OF AN EXISTING

AMMONIA PLANT

Figure 3 shows a typical configuration of existing KBR ammonia

plants with natural gas feedstock. TRIG technology can also be
applied to non-KBR ammonia plants.
If SNG produced from coal is used as a feed for the synthesis
loop (synloop) in an existing ammonia plant, some of the process
units upstream of the conventional ammonia synloop become
redundant. Traditional gas-based ammonia plants have front-

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ll Nitrogen wash unit (NWU)/purifier/pressure swing
adsorption (PSA). These units will be integrated with the
existing ammonia synloop for conversion of treated SNG to
ammonia.
Existing ammonia plants that do not include a purification
block would require the addition of either a KBR Purifier or a
NWU unit to handle the change to coal feedstock. However,
existing Purifier-based KBR ammonia plants with cryogenic
purification can handle both natural gas/naphtha and coal
feedstocks.
Figure 1. Current and projected global prices of fossil fuels.

BASE CASE FOR INTEGRATED COAL-TO-AMMONIA

PROCESS: CASE 1

In the KBR coal-to-ammonia process, TRIG technology is

integrated with a typical ammonia synloop, as shown in Figure 4.

PROCESS DESCRIPTION
Coal preparation

Coal is dried, pulverised and pressurised through lock hoppers

before being fed to the TRIG gasifier. The pulverised coal feed,
which can still contain up to 20 wt% moisture and up to 50 wt%
ash, is fed to the TRIG in fluidised gas transport mode.

ASU

The ASU supplies 98 mol% pure oxygen to the gasifier and pure
gaseous nitrogen to the NWU.

Coal gasification using a TRIG gasification island

Figure 2. KBR TRIG unit.

end units capable of handling natural gas ornaphtha as
feedstock. These typical front-end units includefeed gas
compression and desulfurisation, process aircompression,
primary and secondary reforming, carbonmonoxide shift
conversion, and acid gas removal withlow loadings of carbon
dioxide from the natural
gas/naphtha.
As coal typically has a higher amount of sulfur and a higher
carbon-to-hydrogen ratio, which results in higher carbon dioxide
formation from the reforming reactions, the front-end equipment
of traditional natural gas-based ammonia plants needs to be
replaced by new or modified equipment specific to processing
and conversion of coal to syngas. The new or modified process
units include:
ll
ll
ll
ll
ll

Coal milling and drying.

Air separation unit (ASU).
TRIG.
Carbon monoxide shift reactor (sour shift).
COS hydrolysis, modification/addition of acid gas
removal unit (AGRU) to handle high loadings of carbon
dioxide and sulfur in coal.

Coal, oxygen and steam are fed to the TRIG gasifier using
proprietary Pressure Decoupled Advanced Coal (PDAC) coal
feeders. Gasification reactions take place in the fluidised bed
gasifier operating in the high velocity transport regime. Steam is
added to the gasifier, both as a reactant and as a moderator to
control the reaction temperature at about 980C (1800F). The
TRIG is refractory-lined for a cold-shell design using carbon steel
metallurgy and contains no internals.
Hot syngas exiting the gasifier cyclones enters a syngas cooler,
which cools the syngas to approximately 370C and produces
high pressure steam. The partially cooled syngas then enters the
proprietary particulate control device (PCD), where robust,
efficient, sintered-metal filters remove particulates to a very low
level (< 10 ppm). Dry, powdered, coarse ash is withdrawn
continuously from the TRIG and cooled and depressurised in a
proprietary continuous coarse ash depressurisation (CCAD)
cooler and pressure let-down devices (PLDs). Dry, powdered, fine
ash from the PCD is withdrawn continuously from the PCD and
cooled and depressured in the proprietary continuous fine ash
depressurisation (CFAD) cooler and PLDs.

Syngas saturation and sour shift

To maximise the hydrogen production for ammonia, carbon

monoxide from the raw, partially-cooled, particulate-free SNG
product from the TRIG island is catalytically reacted with steam
in a sour shift reactor to form additional carbon dioxide and
hydrogen.

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Figure 3. Typical configuration of existing KBR ammonia plants.

Heat recovery and mercury removal

Shift effluent is cooled by generating high-pressure superheated

steam; condensate is removed; and the syngas is passed through
a mercury removal guard bed.

AGRU

The bulk of the acid gases in the syngas are removed in the
AGRU. After sulfur polishing, the recovered carbon dioxide can
be sent to a urea plant. Refrigeration load for the AGRU is
provided by the ammonia refrigeration compressor.

Sulfur removal unit (SRU)

Elemental sulfur can be recovered from the hydrogen sulfide

stream from the overhead of the solvent stripper in a SRU by a
suitable catalytic sulfur removal process.

NWU

SNG leaving the AGRU is sent to the NWU to recover hydrogen

at more than 99.5% mol purity. Pure nitrogen (99.99% purity with
oxygen <10 ppmv and argon <30 ppmv) from the ASU is added
to the NWU for the purification of syngas and to adjust the
hydrogen-to-nitrogen ratio in the SNG to 3:1 (with carbon

monoxide < 3 ppmv; methane <3ppmv; oxygen < 2 ppmv and

argon < 15 ppmv).
The NWU is composed of a molecular sieve adsorber and a
downstream cryogenic pocess section (cold box). The adsorber
removes water and carbon dioxide. Subsequently, the residual
inert components, like carbon monoxide, argon and methane are
separated from the process gas by a liquid nitrogen wash process
in the cold box section, such that the desired hydrogen-tonitrogen ratio of 3:1 is established. All carbon monoxide, carbon
dioxide, methane and argon from the NWU end up in a tail gas
stream, which is sent as fuel gas to the package boiler and waste
heat boiler.

Ammonia synloop

The SNG from the NWU is compressed in a syngas compressor

and recycled gas from the synloop primary separator mixes with
the make-up syngas. Ammonia is produced from the mixed gas
in a multiple fixed bed converter catalysed by promoted iron
and/or ruthenium. Ammonia is condensed from the converter
effluent stream by efficient chilling using ammonia refrigerant in
the KBR Unitised Chiller and the ammonia is separated from
the converter effluent in the ammonia separator. The separated

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ll A NWU unit removes all traces of carbon monoxide
and carbon dioxide, which are poisons for the ammonia
synthesis catalyst.

OPTIONAL CASES FOR INTEGRATED COAL-TOAMMONIA PROCESSES

Figure 4. Integrated coal to ammonia process.

In addition to the case 1 presented above, two additional options

for an integrated coal-to-ammonia process conversion are
presented below. The additional options (case 2 and case 3) are
different from the base case in either the level of oxygen and/or
air purity or in the use of a Purifier or PSA instead of the NWU.

CASE 2

Figure 5. Block flow diagram for coal to ammonia process (case 2).

In case 2 (Figure 5), 98% oxygen from an ASU is sent to the gasifier
as in the base case. However, a KBR Purifier is used instead of a
NWU downstream of the AGRU. Carbon monoxide and carbon
dioxide present in the SNG from carbon monoxide shift unit and
AGRU can be handled in the NWU but not the Purifier, as the two
compounds would freeze up in the Purifier, where temperatures
are below the freezing points of both compounds. Instead, a
methanator is added upstream of the Purifier to convert carbon
monoxide and carbon dioxide to methane before being sent to the
Purifier. The methane, argon and surplus nitrogen are rejected as
tail gas from the Purifier and sent to the package boiler. The
Purifier produces SNGs with a hydrogen-to-nitrogen ratio of 3:1,
which is sent to the ammonia synloop.

CASE 3

ammonia is flashed in the ammonia let-down drum and diverted

to the ammonia refrigerant system. The ammonia vapours from
the syngas chiller on the refrigerant side are compressed in a
refrigerant compressor. The compressed ammonia is condensed
in the ammonia condenser and sent to the ammonia refrigerant
receiver. The ammonia synloop can be designed to produce both
warm and cold ammonia product streams depending on the
clients requirements.

In case 3 (Figure 6), the ASU produces 99.6 mol% purity oxygen. A
PSA is used downstream of the AGRU to recover > 90% of the
hydrogen from the SNG (with a 99.9% mol purity and < 10 ppmv
carbon monoxide). The tail gas from PSA is sent to the package
boiler. Pure nitrogen (99.99% purity) from the ASU is directly
added downstream of the PSA to provide a hydrogen-to-nitrogen
ratio of 3:1 in the feed gas to the ammonia synloop.
If there is a limitation on sending the tail gas to the package
boiler, then it can be sent to a KBR ATR/KRES reforming block,
where the tail gas is reformed to make additional hydrogen and
carbon monoxide SNG and sent to the AGRU. Significant benefits
of KRES are reduced NOx and carbon dioxide emissions, as well
as a reduction in coal feed requirement.

PROCESS CONCLUSIONS

RECOMMENDATIONS

ll Low CAPEX and OPEX compared to a Purifier or PSA

ll A NWU can increase the capacity of an existing ammonia
plant synloop by removing inerts (methane and argon)
from the hydrogen-nitrogen feed to the ammonia
converter. Typically, the synloop for an existing 2000 tpd
capacity ammonia plant based on natural gas feed can be
increased to 2200 tpd capacity by using NWU on a coal
feedstock conversion. Capacities of individual equipments
in the synloop shall be evaluated for capacity expansion.

ll For a grassroots coal-to-ammonia plant, a NWU is

recommended because of lower CAPEX and OPEX in the
configuration as shown in case 1.
ll For existing Purifier-based KBR ammonia plants, reuse the
Purifier/methanator and install the associated equipment for
the front end gasification island and ASU as shown in case 2.
ll For existing non-KBR ammonia plants, reuse the methanator,
install a new KBR Purifier and associated equipment for the
front end gasification island and the ASU.

Figure 6. Block flow diagram for coal to ammonia process (case 3).

For grass roots, coal-based ammonia plants, a NWU would be

the best option for gas purification because:

Based on the three cases presented for integrated coaltoammonia

conversion, the following recommendations are suggested:

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