Ammonia

This article is part of the Global Chemicals Inventory, a project of Global Energy Monitor.

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Ammonia is a naturally occurring gas used as a building block in many industrial and household products. Roughly 70% of global ammonia production goes into fertilizers, which help convert nitrogen in the air into nutrients for crops. The rest supports industries such as plastics, explosives and synthetic fibers.

Source: Fertilizer pellets made from ammonia

Feedstocks and Production Methods

The Haber-Bosch process, which combines hydrogen and nitrogen, is the primary production route for ammonia. This technique, developed by chemist Fritz Haber and scaled up by engineer Carl Bosch, made large-scale ammonia production practical and affordable. Hydrogen is typically obtained from syngas produced via the Steam Methane Reforming process, while nitrogen is separated from the air by the Fractional Distillation of Liquid Air method.

Stand-alone versus integrated ammonia plants

A stand-alone ammonia plant consumes significant natural gas as both fuel and a feedstock, creating ammonia as the final product which is then shipped off-site to be used elsewhere. An integrated ammonia plant produces its own ammonia as in a stand-alone plant, but the ammonia is then consumed on-site to make other compounds, such as urea, ammonium nitrate, ammonium sulfate, nitric acid, or urea ammonium nitrate. The main difference between the two plant types is the primary economic product at the plant; in the first case, it is ammonia itself, while in the second case, it is typically fertilizers or other ammonia-derived chemicals.