Site items in: Presentations

Power-to-Ammonia-to-Power (P2A2P) for Local Electricity Storage in 2025
Presentation

A carbon-free, circular economy is required to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. A commonly named alternative to the carbon-based economy is the hydrogen economy. However, storing and transporting hydrogen is difficult. Therefore, the ammonia economy is proposed. Ammonia (NH3) is a carbon-free hydrogen carrier, which can mediate the hydrogen economy. Especially for long-term storage (above 1 day), ammonia is more economically stored than hydrogen. Transportation costs are greatly reduced by adopting a decentralized energy economy. Furthermore, political-economic factors influence energy prices less in a decentralized energy economy. With small-scale ammonia production gaining momentum, business models for the decentralized ammonia economy are…

The Battolyser as a tool to overcome production problems by the intermittancy of green energy
Presentation

The intermittency of sustainable energy sources calls for either flexible production or storage of energy, to keep continuous processes running continuously. The newly developed Battolyser technology has the possibility of both, creating flexible production and storage in one piece of equipment. The Battolyser is therefore a tool to keep production processes of hydrogen and / or ammonia under a continuous mode at lowest CAPEX. The design of this Battolyser can be such that the vulnerable ammonia Haber Bosch synthesis process can be kept in operation during certain periods of outage of (green) power, without installing additional large batteries. The Battolyser…

Solid Oxide Cell Enabled Ammonia Synthesis and Ammonia Based Power Production
Presentation

Haldor Topsøe’s leading role as supplier of ammonia synthesis catalysts and technology is well known. The company has, however, also been active for decades in developing Solid Oxide Cell based stacks and systems. The presentation will describe a novel, highly integrated process for ammonia synthesis based on Solid Oxide Electrolysis. The energy efficiency is very high due to ability of the SOEC to use steam generated from the synthesis reaction heat in the ammonia synthesis loop and the favorable thermodynamics of high temperature electrolysis. Experimental results from hydrogen generation from steam using SOEC and power production from ammonia using Solid…

Screening Binary Redox Pairs for Solar Thermochemical Ammonia Synthesis Using Machine Learned Predictions of Gibbs Formation Energies at Finite Temperatures
Presentation

Solar thermochemical ammonia synthesis (STAS) is a reduction/oxidation (redox) cycle which enables the production of ammonia (NH3) from air, water, and concentrated sunlight. In this process, a metal nitride (MN) is oxidized by steam to produce a metal oxide (MO) and NH3; the resulting MO is reduced at high temperature (driven by concentrated solar radiation) and subsequently used to reduce atmospheric nitrogen (N2) and reform the MN and restart the NH3 synthesis cycle. The identification of optimal redox pairs (MO/MN) for this process has been historically limited by the lack of thermochemical data (i.e., Gibbs formation energies at finite temperatures)…

Process Synthesis and Global Optimization of Novel Ammonia Production Processes
Presentation

Synthetic ammonia production has played a huge role in sustaining population growth by providing the nitrogen in fertilizers that are widely used in modern agriculture. Even long after it was first commercially developed by Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch in the 1930s, the Haber-Bosch process remains the basis for industrial ammonia production today. Through reducing energy requirements by half in the last 50 years, centralized industrial plants have kept their technical and economic advantage over other modes of operation. However, the centralized production also comes with high transportation costs, since plant capacities usually exceed local ammonia consumption [1]. This and…

Our Iowa Renewable Hydrogen and Ammonia Generation System
Presentation

The presentation will summarize the development of the demonstration size renewable fuel and fertilizer system on my Iowa farm. Solar power, water, and air are used to make hydrogen and ammonia fuel used to power a modified John Deere 7810 tractor. The ammonia can also be used to fertilize corn cropland. The development of the ammonia reactor will be described and its performance discussed. There are no carbon emissions in either the generation or consumption of the hydrogen and ammonia.

Dense Metallic Membrane Reactor Synthesis of Ammonia at Moderate Conditions and Low Cost
Presentation

Commercial ammonia synthesis relies on the Haber–Bosch process that has remained largely unchanged for a hundred years. The equilibrium constant of this exothermic reaction quickly becomes unfavorable above 200 °C, but the catalyst requires temperatures above 400 °C to have sufficient activity. To overcome these conflicting requirements the process is conducted at extremely high pressure (100 – 200 atm) using multiple passes with inter-stage cooling to achieve sufficient conversion. A cost analysis reveals the compressors needed to reach the required pressures consist of 50% the capital cost for Haber-Bosch. Therefore, a longstanding scientific challenge has been to achieve NH3 synthesis…

Nitride-Based Step Catalysis for Ammonia Synthesis at Atmospheric Pressure
Presentation

Formation of metal nitrides to activate dinitrogen is one avenue to ammonia and other nitrogen compounds. Attractive aspects are operation at atmospheric pressure and moderate temperatures, formation of stable chemical intermediates rather than reliance on somewhat sensitive heterogeneous catalysis, and inexpensive materials. If a single metal is used, however, one encounters tradeoffs somewhat akin to the well-known tradeoffs for Haber-Bosch catalysts. Results will be presented for metal nitride-based ammonia synthesis, and new metal alloys that can address some of the tradeoffs between affinity for nitrogen, and formation of ammonia when hydrogen is added. Options using water instead of hydrogen will…

Exploring Peptide-Bound Catalysts for Electrochemical Ammonia Generation
Presentation

Today, most ammonia (NH3) manufacturing occurs via the Haber-Bosch process. This process consumes hydrogen from fossil fuels, and as a result NH3 contributes the highest amount of greenhouse gas emissions out of the top 18 large-volume chemicals made globally. Because the process is high temperature (400°–500°C) and pressure (150–300 atm) with a low (15%) single-pass conversion efficiency, the plants have to be very large to be economical. This means that ammonia is shipped from centralized locations, further increasing greenhouse gas emissions because of the fuel consumed in transportation. Additionally, their large size makes it difficult to integrate with renewable sources…

Design Optimization of a Distributed Ammonia Generation System
Presentation

Distributed ammonia generation located near farms is a promising alternative to the current practice of large-scale, centralized production. This production mode would reduce the need for transportation of ammonia over long distances currently caused by the mismatch between production and consumption locations. In addition, a small-scale ammonia synthesis process could more easily take advantage of distributed power generation based on wind or sunlight to reduce energy costs and lessen the dependence on fossil fuels. Distributed, renewables-based fertilizer production would largely insulate farmers against market uncertainty while also increasing the sustainability of the agricultural supply chain. However, a technically proven, economically…