A process for nitric acid production

Abstract

Integrated process for the synthesis of ammonia and nitric acid including: a) production of an ammonia make-up synthesis gas,comprising steam reforming of a hydrocarbon feedstock under provision of steam reforming heat;catalytic conversion of said make-up synthesis gas into ammonia; catalytic oxidation of a stream of ammonia obtaining a process gas; absorption of said process gas with water obtaining nitric acid, wherein at least a portion of the steam reforming heat is recovered from said hot process gas.

Description

technical field [0001] The invention relates to the field of nitric acid production. Background technique [0002] Nitric acid is synthesized by the reaction of ammonia and oxygen. Specifically, one mole of nitric acid is obtained by reacting one mole of ammonia with two moles of oxygen according to the following reaction: [0003] NH 3 +2O 2 →HNO 3 +H 2 O (1) [0004] The synthesis of nitric acid mainly involves the catalytic oxidation of ammonia to produce nitrogen oxides including NOx (mainly NO and NO 2 ), N 2 A gas of O by-product, oxygen and nitrogen, and a subsequent step in which the gas is contacted with water, wherein the water and NO 2 react to produce nitric acid. The NO 2 The reaction with water to produce nitric acid is often called absorption. With NO 2 is absorbed, NO and O 2 The reaction produces more NO 2 . [0005] The absorption step usually also delivers N 2 O and residual NOx exhaust. The exhaust gas has a pressure above atmospheric pre...

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Problems solved by technology

In addition, steam generation increases with the efficiency of the nitric acid process and the ammonia process, since for these two processes higher efficiencies generally require lower water steam usage; therefore, increasing the efficiency of such processes is strongly discouraged , as this would only lead to an increase in excess water vapor

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