CF Industries' Board has approved $285 million of investment into blue ammonia production at two of its US plants - Donaldsonville and Yazoo City. By 2024 the new works will enable annual production of 1.25 million tonnes blue ammonia. Once finished, the units could sequester up to 2.5 million tons of CO2 per year (2 million tons at Donaldsonville and 500,000 tons at Yazoo City).
A new MoU between Linde and KazMunyGas (KMG, Kazakhstan's national oil & gas organisation) will see the two explore the feasibility of large-scale clean hydrogen & ammonia projects in Kazakhstan. The initial focus will be hydrogen & ammonia production from either natural gas with carbon sequestration, or water electrolysis. Development and construction of projects will follow a successful feasibility phase.
Air Products will lead construction of a USD 4.5 billion, 20 million cubic metres-per-day blue hydrogen & ammonia production plant in Ascension Parish, Louisiana. Hydrocarbon feedstock will be used to produce hydrogen, with carbon emissions captured and permanently sequestered (the project will be the single largest instance of permanent sequestration in the world).
The Role of Low-Carbon Fuels in the Clean Energy Transitions of the Power Sector forecasts a significant role for low-carbon hydrogen and ammonia in decarbonising the power sector, and highlights the promising results of co-firing trials to date (both coal power plants and gas turbines). The report also outlines some key next steps to enable the widespread use of these low-carbon fuels.
In August, Robert Howarth and Mark Jacobson, respectively from Cornell and Stanford Universities, published “How green is blue hydrogen”, an examination of the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of blue hydrogen, i.e., hydrogen from steam methane reforming with carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). How valid were the assumptions behind the study, were the calculations correct and can a realistic case be argued for blue hydrogen going forward?
Mitsui & Co., Japan Oil, Gas & Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC) and Wesfarmers will explore the feasibility of a blue ammonia production plant in Western Australia (WA). Emissions from hydrogen production will be stored in depleted gas fields in the Perth Basin (owned by Mitsui).
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.
