This week the Los Angeles City Council voted to transition to 100% clean energy by 2035, in line with President Biden’s national goals and a decade earlier than the city originally planned. This huge rollout of renewable energy generation is expected to be accompanied by a keystone role for renewable hydrogen, ammonia and synthetic methane for combustion-based power generation.
Korean logistics organisation Hyundai Glovis will ship LPG and ammonia from 2024 as part of a new ten-year agreement signed with Swiss-based commodity trader Trafigura. Glovis will spend around US$170 million on two new very large gas carriers (VLGCs) designed to carry both LPG and ammonia.
This week Horisont Energi, Equinor and Vår Energi entered into a new cooperation agreement for development of the Barents Blue facility, and also revealed the project is set to triple in size from 1 million tonnes per year blue ammonia to 3 million.
Azane Fuel Solutions and project partners have been awarded €8,600,000 from the Norwegian government to build its world-first green ammonia bunker terminal. The project partners span the entire value chain for ammonia as a maritime fuel, and include ECONNECT Energy, Amon Maritime, Yara and Viridis Bulk Carriers.
Among the many challenges for cracking researchers is their choice of material to build their catalysts from. There is hope that cheaper, more readily-available materials will replace the Ruthenium-based catalysts that have dominated the field up to this point. This week two new pieces of research suggest a way forwards using alkali metal-based materials: Lithium and Calcium.
The journey from the laboratory bench to the shop floor continues apace in 2021, as researchers deepen their understanding of ammonia combustion within engines. The team at Université d’Orléans has published several pieces of research already this year, with interesting results on operating limits, spray characteristics and flame propagation.
This week: Mitsui & Co., CF Industries team up to explore blue ammonia opportunities (and to link up US and Japan), CCS hydrogen in Pennsylvania, and the Infrastructure Bill.
French organisation Gaztransport & Technigaz (GTT) will design the fuel tanks for five LNG-fueled container vessels (15,000 CTU each) based on its Mark III, ammonia-ready membrane containment system. Vessel deliveries are scheduled for late 2023 to early 2024.
Mitsubishi Power has announced the development of single and mixed-fuel ammonia combustion boilers for industrial applications. Importantly, Mitsubishi also announced that optimal combustion conditions for ammonia have been successfully identified to minimise NOx formation and ammonia slip.
The UK government has launched its vision for a society-wide hydrogen economy, with the first phase to entail 5 GW of low-carbon hydrogen production by 2030. Of huge interest to our readers here at Ammonia Energy are the explicit references in the report to the important future role of ammonia as: i) a maritime fuel, ii) a peaking power fuel for gas turbines, and iii) an export vector.