BASF, OCI agree on first renewable ammonia deliveries
Ammonia produced at BASF’s Ludwigshafen site will be consumed at OCI’s Geleen fertilizers manufacturing complex.
Ammonia produced at BASF’s Ludwigshafen site will be consumed at OCI’s Geleen fertilizers manufacturing complex.
In our November episode of Project Features, Juwö Poroton and Ammonigy joined us to explore their “CO2-free brick production” project, demonstrating the use of cracked ammonia fuel to fire bricks in Wöllstein, Germany. Though hurdles remain for the deployment of the solution at the necessary scale, promising operational results and quality-checked final products were achieved, and progress is being made towards emissions mitigation.
Meet Ammonigy and Juwö Poroton, leaders of a development consortium which has successfully demonstrated a pilot brick kiln that runs on cracked ammonia fuel gas. Explore results from demo operations, and the pathway forward to establishing a market for the new decarbonized product.
Clariant will manufacture catalysts for a new electric steam methane reformer (eSMR) project, which will begin producing 150 tons per day of syngas from 2026. The 10 MW unit will be fed with renewable electricity, producing syngas for a to-be-named German customer.
Ammonigy, Heraeus Precious Metals and the Technical University of Darmstadt have partnered to demonstrate operations using cracked ammonia fuel in a four-stroke MAN test engine. The performance and efficiency of the test engine when running on ammonia-hydrogen fuel was comparable to natural gas operations, and use of an exhaust aftertreatment system reduced potentially harmful nitrogen-based emissions to near-zero levels.
Ammonia cracking tech provider Ammonigy and leading German brick manufacturer Juwö Poroton led the project, successfully demonstrating a pilot-sized brick kiln that runs on cracked ammonia fuel gas. The cracked ammonia-fired bricks were virtually “indistinguishable from bricks fired with natural gas”.
A study spearheaded by the West Australian state government and completed in collaboration between the Mid West Port Authority (Australia), Port of Rotterdam (Netherlands) and Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems has shown that renewable ammonia transportation from Western Australia to Germany via Rotterdam is technologically and economically feasible.
A demonstration scale ammonia cracker plant is under construction in Germany as part of a partnership between thyssenkrupp Uhde and Uniper. The plant, expected to be commissioned by the end of 2026, will handle about 28 tonnes per day of ammonia, and serve as a test case for the planned hydrogen import terminal at the port of Wilhelmshaven, northwestern Germany.
ISPT’s new report explores the design, technical, and safety considerations of a theoretical 550 km ammonia pipeline linking the Port of Rotterdam to Karlsruhe in Germany, carrying 7 million tons per year of ammonia.