Fortescue Future Industries and German energy giant E.ON have signed a significant hydrogen supply & distribution agreement this week. Aiming to begin as quickly as possible, by 2030 FFI will ramp up supply to 5 million tonnes of green hydrogen to Europe per year for distribution by E.ON.
Two developments this week as progress continues towards clean ammonia supply chains between the EU and the Middle East:
1. ADNOC signed multiple agreements with a diverse set of German organisations to study, implement and accelerate clean hydrogen supply chains between Germany and the UAE. Among the agreements is the execution of a blue ammonia “demonstration cargo” shipment from the UAE to Germany this year, via Fertiglobe’s Fertil plant in al Ruwais, UAE.
2. The UAE Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure and the Dutch Ministry for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation signed a new MoU on hydrogen energy, with a view to supplying Europe via green hydrogen & ammonia imports into the Port of Rotterdam.
A high-powered consortium of academic & industry partners - VoltaChem, TNO, ISPT, Air Liquide, BP, and OCI - will explore the upscaling potential of solid oxide electrolysis (SOEC) to an industrial scale. One of the industrial applications to be investigated is the use of SOEC technology for hydrogen production at an ammonia plant. The study aims to present a viable roadmap forward for an SOEC demonstration integrated into an existing petrochemical facility.
The new report from ISPT is the culmination of the Hydrohub Gigawatt Scale Elektrolyser project, and presents a detailed design for an advanced, GW-scale green hydrogen plant. The greenfield design could be up-and-running in a Dutch port area by 2030, and would have total investment cost levels of 730 €/kW for alkaline water electrolysis, or 830 €/kW for PEM water electolysis. This translates to about half the CAPEX required for a state-of-the-art design from 2020.
thyssenkrupp will engineer, procure and fabricate a 2 GW+ electrolysis plant at the NEOM project in Saudi Arabia, based on their 20 MW alkaline water electrolysis module. The plant is scheduled to start production in 2026, with hydrogen from the facility will be used to make ammonia for export to global markets. At the Port of Rotterdam, thyssenkrupp will also take the lead on Shell's 200 MW, ‘Holland Hydrogen I’ project, with hydrogen production scheduled to start in 2024.
We look at four new developments this week:
1. A team from DTU Energy and the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics have uncovered a new class of alternative catalysts for mild condition ammonia synthesis. The ternary ruthenium complex hydrides Li4RuH6 and Ba2RuH6 avoid the energy-intensive pathway of nitrogen dissociation in a "synergistic" manner.
2. A team from the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials reported a highly selective (95%) plasma ammonia synthesis method.
3. A team from Delft University of Technology has presented an present an "unconventional electrochemical design" that physically separates hydrogen and dinitrogen activation sites.
4. A team at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research has demonstrated a new mechanochemical ammonia synthesis system that operates at room temperature and pressures as low as 1 bar.
This week we look at three new ammonia recovery projects:
1. A team from the Delft University of Technology has demonstrated that ammonia recovery via vacuum membrane stripping of a wastewater feed can be used to power a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC).
2. In the UK, a new consortium including the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) and the University of Leeds has received government funding to demonstrate a novel solution to harvest green ammonia from pig waste.
3. A team from the Ukrainian National University of Food Technology has proposed a new method of sourcing useable ammonia fuel from poultry waste via anaerobic digestion.
The Transhydrogen Alliance - a consortium formed this year by Proton Ventures, Trammo DMCC and Varo Energy - will invest $2 billion in green hydrogen production at the Pecém Complex in the Brazilian state of Ceará. The project's aim is to produce 500,000 tonnes per year of green hydrogen, which will be converted to 2.5 million tonnes of green ammonia for import to Europe via the Port of Rotterdam.
