Laughing all the way to the plant
4 Nov 2003
What's claimed to be the world's first full-scale facility for the elimination of laughing gas (N2O) from the waste gas of nitric acid plants was officially commissioned today by AMI Agrolinz Melamine International in Linz, Austria.
The facility uses a new process developed by Uhde to convert the laughing gas obtained in nitric acid production plants to elemental nitrogen and oxygen with the aid of a special catalyst.
Laughing gas is a natural atmospheric trace gas that is essentially harmless. It does, however, contribute to the global greenhouse effect by about 5%, its adverse influence being specifically some 300 times more severe than that of carbon oxide (CO2). The new plant will reduce the emission of laughing gas at the site of the Agrolinz plant by around 1,600 tonnes per year, which is equivalent to an annual production of about 500,000 tonnes of CO2.
In addition to the elimination of laughing gas, the new process simultaneously provides for the reduction of nitrogen oxides such as NO and NO2, also referred to as NOx, which are set free in the nitric acid process. A separate DeNOx unit was formerly installed to ensure the removal of nitrogen oxides, but in future the new process technology can be used to perform the reduction of N2O and NOx emissions in a single reactor.
A sufficiently high waste gas temperature at the nitric acid plant outlet is the only technical prerequisite for the application of the new process technology, according to Dr. Wolfgang Essig, Chairman of the Executive Board of Uhde GmbH.
