Ohmium will deliver electrolysers to Tarafert to integrate into their new build ammonia & urea plant in Durango, northern Mexico. The ammonia plant is CCS-based, but an electrolyser facility & 1 GW solar farm will be built next door to give plant operators two different sources of low-carbon hydrogen feedstock: one CCS-based, and the other solar-based.
New US CCS ammonia announcements include: a new million-tonne-per-year facility for OCI in Texas, a new $2 billion production facility for CF Industries and Mitsui & Co. in Louisiana, multi-million-tonnes-per-year of production output for JERA, ConocoPhillips and Uniper on the Gulf Coast spread over multiple export projects, and FID reached for OCI’s decarbonisation project in Iowa.
Yara and Northern Lights have signed the world’s first commercial agreement for cross border CO2 transport and storage. Emissions from the Sluiskil production plant in the Netherlands will be captured, processed and transported for sequestration at the Northern Lights storage site off the coast of Norway. Yara is pursuing multiple decarbonisation options for the Sluiskil plant, including this CCS announcement, waste hydrogen, and offshore wind-to-hydrogen as part of Ørsted’s larger SeaH2Land project.
Yara and a consortium of industrial partners will join forces to develop a CCS project near the cities of Ravenna and Ferrara in northern Italy. The partners represent a wide range of energy-intensive industries, including Yara’s two fertiliser & urea production plants. The Ravenna project would capture emissions from industrial facilities in the area, transport and permanently store them in depleted gas fields in the Adriatic Sea. The project is the first of its kind in Italy.
Our latest Ammonia Project Features webinar focused on various pathways for decarbonizing fossil-based ammonia production in North America. Blake Adair from Nutrien took us on a tour of some of his organisation’s existing low-carbon ammonia production facilities. He also explained how the technology solutions already exist to drive down emissions from hydrogen production, and improve rates of carbon capture. Dr. Amgad Elgowainy from Argonne National Laboratories then presented his team’s analysis of carbon dioxide mitigation costs for ammonia production, noting that current federal incentives for CCS projects already have a material impact on project costs. With incentives in place and mature technology available, we will soon see more low-carbon ammonia production projects emerge in North America.
Aramco is targeting production of 11 million tonnes per year of low-carbon ammonia by 2030, among a raft of new sustainability goals announced this week. Aramco’s target for renewable energy generating capacity target (12 GW) will be met by its involvement in the new ammonia Supergiant the Saudi Arabia Renewable Energy Hub, but the source of low-carbon ammonia production is not yet clear.
As part of a new round of funding announcements, the US Department of Energy will contribute nearly $10 million to three significant ammonia energy initiatives:
Nutrien has announced plans for a $2 billion, million-tonne-per-year CCS ammonia production facility in Geismar, Louisiana. Nutrien will partner with Denbury, who will handle the construction & operation of necessary CCS infrastructure, with permanent underground sequestration to occur. Mitsubishi Corporation has agreed to off take up to 40% of the produced ammonia, which will be exported to the “Asian fuel market”.
The first episode of our new series Ammonia Project Features revealed interesting details about current and future low-carbon ammonia projects in Europe. Bjørgulf Eidesen (Horisont Energi) explained that the Barents Blue project aims to set an ambitious new standard for low-carbon ammonia production, particularly by demonstrating transparency on its CO2 footprint & other sustainability indicators. But, although Europe’s technical capacity for carbon storage is far greater than what will be required, Toby Lockwood (Clean Air Task Force) reminded us that progress is slow, with only half the capacity required by 2030 currently developed. Supporting policy, tight regulations and funding support is all required from a government level.