The chemical and petrochemical sector is the largest industrial energy consumer. Ammonia production is responsible for about 17% of the energy consumed in this sector. In 2004, the ammonia manufacturing industry consumed 5.6 EJ of fossil fuels, of which 2.7 EJ was for energy and 2.9 EJ for feedstock use.1 Although the energy use per tonne of ammonia has decreased by 30% over the last thirty years, adopting best available technologies (BAT) worldwide can further reduce energy use by 20-25%1, 2 and decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 30%.2

Reducing the stack temperature by 100˚C will result in energy savings of approximately 0.4 GJ/ t NH3 (Christensen, 2001).

 By installing a feed pre-heat coil in the low temperature convection section of the reformer flue gas duct, a plant in India was able to reduce flue gas temperature of the reformer from 170˚C to 148˚C and eliminated the need for a fired heater, resulting in energy savings of 0.17 GJ/t NH3 (Nand and Goswami, 2009(link is external)). 

 Another Indian installed a natural gas heating coil to recover the heat from the reformer flue gas. The reformer flue gas temperature was reduced from 190˚C to 160˚C, saving 0.18 GJ/t NH3 (Nand and Goswami, 2009(link is external)). 

At an ammonia plant in Pakistan, a demineralized water preheating coil was installed to recover heat from the flue gas (240˚C). The temperature of the flue gas was lowered to 137˚C, recovering approximately 44 GJ/hour of waste heat from the flue gases (Yousaf, 2011)

Heat recovery in the Pakistani plant saved $ 2 Million/year (Yousaf, 2011)

 For a 1 300 tpd plant, the required investments are estimated to be around US $ 700 000 [2008 values] (FAI, 2013).

 For a 1 500 tpd plant, investments are estimated at around US $ 200 000 (FAI, 2013).

Energy consumption can be reduced by 4-10% (IPTS/EC, 2007; Nieuwlaar, 2001; Patel et al., unknown date)

 In Netherlands, a plant in Rozenburg, energy savings of about 4% were realized with the installation of an adiabatic pre-reformer. (Worrell and Blok, 1994). 

For a 2 000 t/day plant, the investment cost associated with the installation of a pre-reformer is reported to ¥280 million, resulting in a payback time of 1.7 years (ECCJ, 1999 p. 156). 

According to Nieuwlaar (2001) the investment cost is estimated at €7.5/GJ. 

 For the plant in Netherlands, the installation costs for the adiabatic pre-reformer was estimated as $6/tonne ammonia, and the payback time was estimated to be  one to three years (in 1990 dollars) (Worrell and Blok, 1994).

 For a 1500 tpd plant, the investments are in the range of US $ 10 million (2000 values) (FAI, 2013).

 The cost of replacing burner nozzles in a 1 500 tpd plant is reported to be around US $500 000(FAI, 2013).

This measure increases the capital costs (FAI, 2013).