Within the current global climate, precedence has been set on achieving greater sustainable development within process industries. The ammonia process (BAU case) has been labelled as a significant greenhouse gas (GHG) producer-mainly due to high energy demand and CO₂ emissions. This places the process under substantial scrutiny in terms of its climate change impacts and thus, provides a strong case study for viable transition towards greater sustainable operations. Here we examine, for the first time, sustainable eco-park designs for the diversification of the ammonia industry utilizing industrial symbiosis. The network considers several carbon capture and utilization (CCU) applications as well as ammonia (NH₃) integration to produce the following downstream products: NH₃, urea, Urea Ammonium Nitrate (UAN), Melamine (Mel) and Methanol (MeOH). Our results demonstrate improved energy efficiency with the inclusion of MeOH while UAN decreases net energy demand. Economically, the incorporation of MeOH gave attractive returns on investment due to increased productivity. Insights into environmental sustainability, through the assessment of Planetary Boundaries (PBs), revealed high risk operations aligned to climate change and ocean acidification earth systems linked to BAU operations. These impacts improved considerably with the addition of MeOH, resulting in safe operations of the ammonia process, attributed to increased waste recovery. These results were further supported using Life Cycle Sustainability Assessments, highlighting the potential of the BAU + urea + UAN + Mel + MeOH eco-park design for enhanced sustainable development. Overall, the findings of our paper suggest that upcoming and existing ammonia facilities can exploit industrial symbiosis to achieve greater sustainability through diversification of process operations.

中文翻译：

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在集成的工业网络中实现绝对的可持续性–以氨工艺为例

在当前的全球气候下，已经优先考虑在加工行业实现更大的可持续发展。氨法（以BAU为例）被标记为重要的温室气体（GHG）生产商，主要是由于能源需求高和CO ₂排放量大。这使该过程就其对气候变化的影响受到了严格的审查，因此，为强有力的案例研究提供了可行的过渡，以实现更大程度的可持续运营。在这里，我们首次探讨了利用工业共生来实现氨工业多样化的可持续生态园区设计。该网络考虑了几种碳捕获和利用（CCU）应用以及氨（NH ₃）的集成，以生产以下下游产品：NH ₃，尿素，尿素硝酸铵（UAN），三聚氰胺（Mel）和甲醇（MeOH）。我们的结果表明，加入MeOH可以提高能源效率，而UAN可以降低净能源需求。从经济上讲，由于生产率的提高，甲醇的引入带来了诱人的投资回报。通过对行星边界（PBs）的评估，对环境可持续性的洞察揭示了与气候变化和与BAU运营相关的海洋酸化地球系统相一致的高风险运营。通过添加MeOH，这些影响得到了显着改善，这归功于废物回收率的提高，氨工艺的安全运行。这些结果得到了生命周期可持续性评估的进一步支持，强调了BAU +尿素+ UAN +梅尔+ MeOH生态园区设计对于增强可持续发展的潜力。总体而言，本文的研究结果表明，即将到来的氨水设施和现有的氨水设施可以利用工业共生关系，通过过程操作的多样化实现更大的可持续性。