SEQUENTIAL MODELLING & OPTIMIZATION OF AMMONIA REACTOR

Ammonia is one of the most important chemicals produced as it has a wide usage in the manufacturing of fertilizers, explosives and any number of important chemicals and products. As a result of this, modeling and optimizing ammonia synthesis has received a lot of attention among the process industries. The production of ammonia depends on the temperature of the feed gas at the top of the reactor i.e. top temperature, the partial pressures of the reactants, and the reactor length. The optimal design problem requires obtaining the optimal reactor length with maximum economic returns corresponding to the various top temperatures. This paper highlights the development of profiles at different top temperatures from 600K to 800K and comparison of the sequential optimization approach with others researchers’ approach such as Potrygin maximum principle, Lasdon’s generalized reduced gradient method, generic algorithm and differential. The optimal reactor lengths of 7.82m with the maximum objective function of $5.15x106 per year for top temperature of the reactor at 694K were obtained using sequential modelling and optimization approach. The value of the objective function obtained using sequential modelling and optimization is higher compared with the value of the objective function obtained by other researchers.