Real time optimization of low temperature shift converter of carbon monoxide in an industrial ammonia plant

Abstract

The main goal of this work is optimize low temperature shift converter (LTS) of Carbon Monoxide (CO) in an Industrial Ammonia Plant considering life time of the catalyst in that converter. Shift converter is a reactor to convert CO into carbon dioxide. CO in ammonia plant comes from steam reforming process that convert natural gas into hydrogen gas. This process will also produce CO gas, where CO gas is toxic to the catalyst in ammonia syntesis reactor and also able to oxidize Fe in ammonia synthesis that is the reason why CO is one of component that can interfere the ammonia gas manufacturing process. To prevent this, the CO gas purification process needs to be done, one of the method is using shift converter process. From the optimization of several operating conditions in low temperature shift converter, a relatively strong correlation is found between flow rate feed and average temperature bed catalyst with the lifetime of the catalyst. The optimization result show that the optimum flow rate feed in LTS is 2754.49 m3/day and average temperature bed catalyst is 224C. Operating at the proposed optimal condition increases life time of the catalyst about 8.02% per year.