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Article

University of Minnesota's Ammonia Program

Stephen H. Crolius December 16, 2016

The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) will present a Webinar on December 21 on "Distributed Ammonia Synthesis." The presenter will be Edward L. Cussler, Distinguished Institute Professor at the Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Department of the University of Minnesota. Distributed ammonia synthesis is one focus related to ammonia energy at the University of Minnesota - but just one. In fact, UMinn is the locus of a unique and globally significant collection of research efforts that promise to have significant impacts in the ammonia industry and the broader energy sector.

Article

Breakthrough Energy Coalition targets carbon-free ammonia

Trevor Brown December 15, 2016

A multi-billion dollar clean energy innovation fund was launched last year, at the Paris climate conference. Led by Bill Gates, the private funding enterprise aimed to develop "groundbreaking new carbon-neutral technologies," without specifying details. Now, the Breakthrough Energy Coalition is starting work, and one of its initial Technical Quests is to make "Zero-GHG Ammonia Production" a reality.

Article

Integrating Ammonia Production with Nuclear Power

Stephen H. Crolius December 09, 2016

In an interview today, Dr. Yaoli Zhang from Xiamen University discussed the case for integrating ammonia production with nuclear power. Dr. Zhang is currently a Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. The idea would be to harness both unused generating capacity and waste heat to produce ammonia with a near-zero carbon footprint.

Article

Grand Challenges in Sustainable Ammonia Synthesis - DOE Roundtable Report, 2016

Trevor Brown December 08, 2016

Earlier this year, the US Department of Energy (DOE) hosted a day-long meeting "to explore the scientific challenges associated with discovering alternative, sustainable processes for ammonia production." The report that came out of this roundtable discussion presents the participants' views on "the current state-of-the-art and the potential challenges and research opportunities ... for heterogeneous catalysis and homogeneous and enzyme catalysis."

Article

Nuon's Power-to-Ammonia update, and the first European ammonia fuel conference in 2017

Trevor Brown December 02, 2016

An article in the latest issue of Dutch-language magazine NPT Proces Technologie provides a detailed update on the Nuon project, about which we wrote a few months ago. Nuon's Power-to-Ammonia project looks at grid-scale storage of "seasonal surplus" electricity from wind and solar in the form of ammonia. Proton Ventures, the originators of the Power-to-Ammonia concept in The Netherlands, have also been sharing details of the project in recent conference presentations - and announced that they will be hosting the first European ammonia fuel conference, in Rotterdam, in May 2017.

Article

NH3 Fuel Association President Presents at AIChE Annual Meeting

Stephen H. Crolius November 30, 2016

NH3 Fuel Association President Norm Olson presented his paper “NH3 – the Optimal Liquid Transportation Fuel” on November 9 at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). The AIChE meeting, held over six days in San Francisco, provided a wide-ranging perspective on the sustainable energy landscape that ammonia energy must compete within.

Article

Coordinated scission of N-H bonds

Trevor Brown November 17, 2016

A paper published in this week's edition of Science outlines a new approach to breaking the hydrogen-nitrogen bonds in ammonia, allowing the production of hydrogen at low temperatures. This research was also reported on phys.org under the headline: "Method found for pulling hydrogen from ammonia for use as clean fuel."

Article

Low-carbon ammonia synthesis: Japan's 'Energy Carriers'

Trevor Brown November 11, 2016

In 2018, a pilot plant in Japan will demonstrate a new way to produce ammonia at industrial-scale, with a low carbon footprint. This is part of Japan's 'Energy Carriers' R&D initiative, which aims to develop technologies to enable the nation's transition to a carbon-free hydrogen economy. The scope of the program covers ten subjects that encompass the full "CO2-free hydrogen value chain." Three of these ten programs describe a technology pathway for making low-carbon ammonia.

Article

"Inside the CSIRO’s hybrid energy systems hothouse"

Trevor Brown November 10, 2016

An interesting article this week went behind the scenes at CSIRO to show how the Australian R&D lab is developing energy management systems to link renewable generation with storage technologies - including ammonia, as a chemical energy storage medium, for export to Asia.

Article

How to create a market for low-carbon ammonia: product labeling

Trevor Brown November 04, 2016

I wrote last week about ARPA-E's "transformative" ammonia synthesis technologies, describing three technology pathways under development: low pressure Haber-Bosch, electrochemical processes, and advanced electrolysis. ARPA-E's ambitious R&D program might imply that a meaningful, commercial market for sustainable ammonia is still decades away. It represents, however, only the slow American tip of a fast-moving global iceberg. In Japan, where there's no debate about climate science, the national effort is already well underway, with three programs to develop low-carbon ammonia synthesis under the Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP), 'Energy Carriers.'