Industrial economic model of water use and waste treatment for ammonia

Abstract

A linear programing model is developed for analyzing the effects of policy, particularly water policy, on the use of water in ammonia production and on the cost of ammonia. Solution of the model for each policy specification gives the least‐cost ammonia production process, the marginal costs of the resource limitations, and the cost of water use and waste water treatment. The effect of systematically decreasing each effluent standard to zero was evaluated, and the effect of increasing the water price on water withdrawals was determined. The following results were obtained: (1) zero discharges of suspended solids, heat, and total dissolved solids increased production costs 3.8% with injection..