Techno-environmental assessment of industrial-scale low-carbon ammonia production pathways

At present, ammonia is one of the most produced chemical commodities in the world. With the growing global population and potential emerging use in energy and transportation, the ammonia demand increase is expected to rise over the following decades. A significant portion of ammonia production at present times relies on fossil fuels like natural gas and coal, leading to extensive emissions of greenhouse gases. To align with the goal of the Paris Agreement limiting the temperature increase of the planet to a certain level, emission reduction for ammonia production procedures is of immediate importance. This thesis intends to analyze different pathways for industrial-scale ammonia production aiming to investigate the emission reduction potential. A cradle-to-supply-gate life cycle assessment was undertaken for different technological pathways to estimate the emissions of ammonia production, followed by a techno-economic analysis for selected case studies. Though ammonia produced from electrolysis-based hydrogen was found to be the least emitting option, techno-economic analysis shows the levelized cost of produced ammonia to be more than two times than the conventional pathway.