Analysis of the Combined Ammonia Production and Cyclohexane Dehydrogenation by a Novel Bifunctional Reactor

In the current work, a novel process including a multitubular thermally coupled reactor for the simultaneous production of benzene and ammonia is proposed. The ammonia synthesis reaction inside the internal tubes provides the cyclohexane dehydrogenation reaction's heat demand in the external tube. Moreover, this novel configuration eliminates the required interstage cooler in the conventional ammonia synthesis plant, leading to a remarkable reduction in operational costs. Furthermore, the cyclohexane dehydrogenation process has been employed to supply all of the ammonia synthesis hydrogen demand; therefore, the production, transportation, and storage cost of hydrogen have been greatly reduced. Besides, the danger of hydrogen gas transportation has been avoided. As another advantage of the proposed configuration, cyclohexane conversion in the thermally coupled reactor has been increased from 0.842 to 0.887 compared to a conventional cyclohexane dehydrogenation reactor. Finally, the performance of the proposed reactor has been studied under various inlet temperatures and molar flow rates.