Simulation and Cost optimization of Ammonia Cracker Process

Ammonia is recognized as a promising marine fuel due to its potential to reduce CO 2 emissions serving both as an energy carrier and a clean fuel. In 2018, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) set targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping by at least 50% by 2050, aiming for complete elimination by 2100. In this study, a centralized ammonia cracking process was simulated using Aspen HYSYS V12. A base case was established, then other cases and a final version were simulated with the aim to maximize energy recovery from the waste heat of the cracker product. For the base case with no heat recovery, the produced H 2 /NH 3 total feed on a kg/kg basis was calculated to 0.128 while for the final version it was calculated to 0.140. New in this work is to determine the most cost optimum case by calculating and comparing the Levelized Cost of Hydrogen (LCOH) for different alternatives. The final version, with the highest hydrogen production rate (586 kmol/h hydrogen from 500 kmol/h total ammonia feed) had the lowest LCOH (5.1 USD/kg H 2 ). Recommendations for further work include reducing inherent uncertainties in the simulation like inclusion of catalyst data, defining other models than Gibbs equilibrium reactors and using data from the adsorption module of Aspen to precisely model the adsorption phenomena and conducting uncertainty analysis on the LCOH evaluations to obtain more reliable techno-economic analysis.