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This is to consult if the ammonia plants, in the CO2 absorption section, at the exit of the absorption tower have a liquid separator or gas scrubber to avoid dragging the solution to the methanation section. In the ammonia plant where I am currently working, the CO2 absorption system does not have a liquid separator and therefore the solution is arriving to the gas-gas heat exchanger, which has the function of increasing the inlet temperature to the methanator with the methanator outlet gas. Due to the entrainment of solution, corrosion problems of such magnitude have occurred that have caused failure in the tubes, originating high CO content at the inlet of the ammonia synthesis rector. The failure of the tubes is due to the fact that the solution is highly corrosive because it is a rich solution, causing damage to the heat exchanger tubes. The objective is to solve the problem and therefore we are studying to place a liquid separator to avoid the above mentioned. We would like to know if the plants where you work have this equipment and how is its design to guide us. What is its efficiency, that is to say, what is the moisture content of the gas stream entering the separator and how much moisture does it contain?
Hi Luis, I imagine this is a hot potassium carbonate process such as Benfield. It is common yo have a waterwash tray at the absorber top and a downstream separator. If the plant is at high load it may be that the tray suffers with jet entrainment and the separator elements with droplets being stripped from the element. I suspect the converter poisoning will be mostly reversible one the catalyst is re-reduced based on similar experience with H2O poisoning incident. During the re-reduction you might want to analyze the ammonia being made for water to try to determine much of the catalyst had been oxidized.
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