Industrial production nitrogen processes

Ammonia production in the world is presently as large as 110 million tonnes per year. The product is stored as a liquid at a pressure of 100 atm (10.1 MPa) and a temperature of -35.5°C. Ammonia is the base material for the manufacture of nitrogen oxides and various industrial products. Nitrogen oxides have a number of appHca-tions. NjO is used in medicine, as it has anesthetic properties (laughing gas). is used as an oxidizer in rocket fuel. From ammonia, nitric add is manufactured by oxidation with air at about 800°C. Different types of catalysts, e.g. platinum, may be used. NO, formed in the oxidation, is reacted with water to HNOj and NO. The technique is called the Ostwald process. 

In 1838, Frederic Kuhlmann discovered die formation of nitrogen oxide (NO) during die catalytic oxidation of ammonia. Wilhelm Ostwald developed die production mediods in 1902 and established die base for today s major commercial processes. However, industrial production began only after Haber and Bosch developed the synthesis of ammonia around 1916. 

Nitric oxide, NO, results from high-temperature combustion, both in stationary sources such as power plants or industrial plants in the production of process heat and in internal combustion engines in vehicles. The NO is oxidized in the atmosphere, usually rather slowly, or more rapidly if there is ozone present, to nitrogen dioxide, NO2. NO2 also reacts further with other constituents, forming nitrates, which is also in fine parhculate form. 

Nitrides such as TiN, AIN, ZrN, HfN, TaN, and Si3N4 and carbonitrides, such as TiCN, NbCN and ZrCN are among the important industrial products formed by the SHS process. Due to the high thermodynamic stability of titanium nitride and titanium carbide, their formation using the SHS method is highly favored even at relatively low pressures of nitrogen. 

In recent years, most attention has been paid to nitrogen fixation, partly in order to understand the fascinating. process by which a molecule traditionally regarded as being unreactive can be reduced readily to ammonia under mild conditions, and also in the hope of establishing new processes for the industrial production of cheap nitrogen fertilizers. More recently the process of denitrification has been receiving attention, while that of nitrification has been much less studied. 

Foams, in the form of froths, are intimately involved and critical to the success of many mineral-separation processes (Chapter 10). Foams may also be applied or encountered at all stages in the petroleum recovery and processing industry (oil-well drilling, reservoir injection, oil-well production and process-plant foams). A class of enhanced oil recovery process involves injecting a gas in the form of a foam. Suitable foams can be formulated for injection with air/nitrogen, natural gas, carbon dioxide, or steam [3,5]. In a thermal process, when a steam foam contacts residual crude oil, there is a tendency to condense and create W/O emulsions. Or, in a non-thermal process, the foam may emulsify the oil itself (now as an O/W emulsion) which is then drawn up into the foam structure the oil droplets eventually penetrate the lamella surfaces, destroying the foam [3], See Chapter 11. 

The demand for nitrogen in a chemically fixed form (as opposed to elemental nitrogen gas) drives a huge international industry that encompasses the production of many nitrogen products. Nitrogen products had a total annual commercial value on the order of 50 billion in 1996. The cornerstone of this industry is ammonia. Virtually all ammonia is produced in anhydrous form via the Haber process. Anhydrous ammonia is the basic raw material in the manufacture of fertilizers, livestock feeds, commercial and military explosives, polymer intermediates, and miscella- neous chemicals.35... 

A process for the industrial production of nitrogen oxide and nitric acid from ammonia and oxygen. 

Coking, as the term is used in the petroleum industry, is a process for converting nondistillable fractions (residua) of petroleum to lower-boiling products and coke. Coking is often used in preference to catalytic cracking because of the presence of metals and nitrogen components that poison catalysts (Speight and Ozum, 2002). 

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