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    Urea

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    PRAJWAL RASTOGI
    Urea

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Urea

    Uploaded by

    PRAJWAL RASTOGI
    10 views2 pages
    Urea

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    © © All Rights Reserved

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    Urea

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    10 views2 pages

    Urea

    Uploaded by

    PRAJWAL RASTOGI
    Urea

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    The formation of urea occurs through two uncatalyzed equilibrium reactions.

    The first reaction, the


    formation of ammonium carbamate (liquid at reaction conditions, solid at standard temperature and
    pressure) is exothermic while the second reaction, the dehydration of the carbamate, is endothermic.
    Since more heat is produced in the first reaction than is consumed in the second reaction, the overall
    reaction is exothermic.

    Thermodynamically, both the carbon dioxide conversion and the urea yield as a function of temperature
    go through a maximum, which usually lies between 450 and 480 K at practical conditions. Increasing the
    NH3/CO2 ratioleadstoahighercarbondioxideconversion.TheyieldonureahasamaximumatanNH3/CO2
    ratio of somewhat above the stoichiometric ratio. A large excess of ammonia results in a reduced yield.
    In current practice, an NH3/CO2 ratio of 3–5 mol/mol is used.

    Because of the equilibrium, the reactor effluent will always contain a considerable amount of
    carbamate. This carbamate needs to be separated from the urea solution.

    To be able to separate the carbamate, it is decomposed back into carbon dioxide and ammonia (the
    reverse of reaction) to separate it from the urea solution. The key challenges in the design of a urea
    plant are efficient handling of the unconverted carbon dioxide and ammonia and minimizing the water
    concentration. The very first commercial urea processes were once-through processes, in which
    carbamate decomposition was effected by reducing the pressure of the reactor effluent by flashing
    through an expansion valve. The unconverted ammonia was then neutralized with, for example, nitric
    acid, to produce ammonium nitrate. However, a major disadvantage of this type of plant is that the
    economics of the plant are not only dependent on the market of the main product, that is, urea, but also
    on that of the coproducts . Once-through processes were soon replaced by total recycle processes, in
    which essentially all of the
    unconvertedammoniaandcarbondioxidearerecycledtotheureareactor.RecyclingoftheNH3/CO2 mixture is
    not as straightforward as it may seem. The reason is that recompression to reaction pressure is required,
    which would lead to the recombination of ammonia and carbon dioxide to form liquid carbamate
    droplets(or solid carbamate crystals at lower temperature) that can damage compressor components.
    There are many different approaches to circumvent this problem, which is illustrated by the remarkably
    large number of urea processes that have been developed. In the following, the so-called stripping
    processes will be discussed.

    In conventional urea processes, decomposition of carbamate is accomplished by a combination of


    pressure reduction and heating as described in the previous section. However, lowering of the carbon
    dioxide or ammonia concentration in the solution leaving the reactor also leads to decomposition of the
    carbamate. This can be accomplished by stripping the mixture from the urea reactor with either carbon
    dioxide (Stamicarbon and Toyo Engineering) or ammonia .

    Carbon dioxide contacts the effluent from the reactor in a stripper which operates at the same pressure
    as the reactor, while heat is supplied at the same time. Unconverted ammonia is stripped from the
    solution, resulting in the decomposition of most of the ammonium carbamate. The gases leaving the
    stripper are sent to the carbamate condenser, in which part of the gas is condensed to form ammonium
    carbamate, and this mixture is fed to the reactor bottom. The major advantage of stripping processes is
    that the unconverted reactants are mainly recycled via the gas phase; this eliminates a large water
    recycle to the reactor section, which is typical of the older carbamate solution-recycle processes.
    Therefore, stripping processes operate at lower NH3/CO2 ratios than conventional total recycle
    processes, typically between 3 and 3.7 mol/mol.

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