Hyphen Hydrogen Energy has signed off-take MoUs with a major chemical company and South Korean hydrogen producer Approtium bringing the total off-take for their Namibian mega-project to just over one million tonnes of renewable ammonia each year. Also in Namibia, Fortescue Future Industries will support the early stages of the new Daures Green Hydrogen Village project.
IHI will explore the conversion of existing LNG import terminals into ammonia import facilities, allowing gas-fired power plants direct access to ammonia fuel. Mitsubishi Shipbuilding and INPEX have completed a conceptual design for a “highly flexible” ammonia bunkering vessel, putting another key piece of ammonia import infrastructure on the path to commercialisation.
As part of the HyEx project, Mitsui & Co., Toyo Engineering and Enaex will develop a solar-powered, 18,000 tonnes-per-year renewable ammonia plant in Tocopilla, northern Chile. Just outside of Tocopilla, Sumitomo and Chilean transmission utility Colbún have teamed up to explore renewable ammonia production & export. The pair will also assess million-tonne-per-year production in Chile’s south. Also in South America, Proton Ventures have contracted Fitchner to assess the feasibility of planned renewable production projects.
ATCO Australia’s ScaleH2 ammonia export project in NSW will receive funding from both the Australian and German governments. Feasibility work will begin on the 800,000 tonnes-per-year ammonia plant, also being developed by NSW Powerfuels. The announcement comes as the two-year HySupply project released its final report, and a new government-level MoU was signed to develop an export supply chain from Australia to Rotterdam.
ACWA Power and the Uzbek government will jointly develop a pilot-scale renewable hydrogen facility, which is to be integrated with an existing ammonia & fertilizer plant outside the country’s capital Tashkent. The pair will also explore the feasibility of a 500,000 tonnes per year renewable ammonia facility in the Central Asian country.
Electrolysis-based ammonia production peaked worldwide around 1970, before the economies of scale and cheap gas feedstock led to its decline. With decarbonization and climate-neutral industrial processes now a critical priority, electrolysis-based ammonia production has re-emerged as a long-term solution. From a base of 10,000 tonnes per year worldwide production in 2020, as much as 100 million tonnes per year of electrolysis-based ammonia could be produced by the end of this decade, driven by a dramatic roll-out of renewable energy generation and installed electrolyzer capacity.
In maritime ammonia updates this week:
Topse & Mintal Hydrogen will develop a dynamic, renewable ammonia plant in Baotou, China. Similar to Topsoe’s project in Skovgaard (Denmark), the electrolyser plant in Baotou will be directly connected to renewable energy generation, with production to begin in 2025.
GE and IHI will define a technology roadmap to convert existing GE gas turbine models to run on up to 100% ammonia fuel by 2030, with implementation & testing of prototypes to follow. A “retrofittable” ammonia combustion system will be developed for three utility-scale GE models, with the potential to roll the technology out across GE’s existing Asian turbine fleet.
Amogy has announced successful testing of its new ammonia-powered, Class 8 semi-truck in Stony Brook, New York. The 300 kW ammonia-to-power system powered the semi-truck for several hours, with full track testing to occur later this month. Amogy now has its sights set on a 1 MW demonstration in a retrofitted tugboat later this year.