Capacity Configuration and Operation Scheduling for Green Ammonia Production

Toward a greener future, ammonia is considered an ideal carbon-free energy carrier for storing and distributing renewable energy, such as wind and solar, on a large scale to enable global sustainable development. However, the inherent high-frequency and high-amplitude fluctuations pose a significant challenge to the economics and safety of the conversion process. System configuration and scheduling become critical. This work proposes a synergistic optimization methodology for the capacity configuration and operation scheduling of green ammonia production, aiming to improve the sustainable energy utilization, the economic performance, and safety of the system. First, a prescheduling model is solved and a preliminary capacity configuration is obtained, followed by detailed-scheduling to further investigate the optimal operation of different configurations. Results of its application to a case study of wind- and solar-powered ammonia production indicate that the proposed method can properly depict the response surface of the partial load cost of ammonia and revenue over different capacity configurations, which can be employed to better improve the sustainability of the power-to-ammonia system.