Operation & Maintenance

Introduction Purification is an important part of any synthesis gas generation plant, and this is no different for an Ammonia plant. Because of the large volumes of hydrocarbon feedstock processed even small traces of poisons exit the purification system will have a significant cumulative effect on the performance of downstream catalysts. It is therefore extremely important to completely purify the feedstock before it is further processed to achieve the long catalyst lives and hence production runs needed for economic operation. As such the importance of the good operation, monitoring and maintenance of the purification system can not be understated. The purpose of this paper is to, • Detail some fundamentals about purification chemistry, • Detail the principles of the operation of purification, • Discuss some common operating problems.