Site items in: Funding Opportunities

The Ammonia Wrap: no major obstacles for NoGAPS success and more
Article

Welcome to the Ammonia Wrap: a summary of all the latest announcements, news items and publications about ammonia energy. This week: latest report from NoGAPS, Viking Energy project takes another step, more collaborations for Yara, thyssenkrupp to invest in cracking R&D, investment in clean hydrogen technology in the USA, world-first visualisation of ammonia combustion in a spark-ignition engine and our numbers of the week.

The Ammonia Wrap: new funding and investment for ammonia energy rolls in, next steps for Uruguay, and Sumitomo to develop a hydrogen
Article

Welcome to the Ammonia Wrap: a summary of all the latest announcements, news items and publications about ammonia energy. This week: new funding and investment for ammonia energy (Starfire Energy, GenCell, Syzygy Plasmonics and Hazer Group), marine engines from the "Ammoniamot" consortium, Uruguay's national hydrogen strategy takes another step, Onahama Port to investigate hydrogen & ammonia imports and Sumitomo to develop Gladstone's hydrogen "ecosystem".

The Ammonia Wrap: Ørsted's P2X vision for the North Sea, Gunvor's new sustainability commitments, the finance world backs green hydrogen and Hydrofuel-Ontario Tech's new partnership
Article

Welcome to the Ammonia Wrap: a summary of all the latest announcements, news items and publications about ammonia energy. This week: Ørsted unveils its P2X vision for the North Sea, energy trader Gunvor commits $500 million to sustainability, emissions reductions, finance world backs green hydrogen, Hydrofuel and Ontario Tech join forces and a new blue hydrogen/ammonia collaboration.

Australian Renewable Energy Agency Issues H2 Fuel Carriers RFP
Article

One of Ammonia Energy’s “top ten” stories of 2017 described Australia’s early steps toward export of renewable hydrogen in the form of green ammonia.  The story said that “Agencies such as the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) made it clear during the year that the country intends to build on [its historical] position” as a supplier of fossil energy to countries such as Japan.  ARENA took a tangible step in this direction on December 20, 2017 with the release of a Request for Proposal for a AUD$20 million (USD$16 million) renewable hydrogen R&D funding program.  Included in the scope, per ARENA’s 2017 Investment Plan, could be “demonstration of renewable production methods for transportable energy storage options (such as hydrogen or ammonia).”

Optimizing technology pathways for Ammonia Fuel: production, transportation, and use
Article

A paper has just been published by researchers in The Philippines who set out to determine the most environmentally benign way to produce, transport, and use ammonia as a fuel for vehicles. This new work provides a detailed life cycle analysis of a broad range of ammonia technologies, evaluating both carbon and nitrogen footprints of each, and identifying the optimal "well-to-wheel" pathway. Their results support the idea that using ammonia for energy presents a safe and sustainable way to bring about the hydrogen economy.

REFUEL Is Back on Track
Article

The U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E REFUEL Program, whose continued existence seemed to be in doubt two months ago, now appears to be back on track.  Invitations were sent a week ago for the ARPA-E REFUEL Program Kickoff, an event that was originally scheduled for April 25 and 26 in Houston.  It is now scheduled to take place in Denver on August 16, 17, and 18.  Attendance will be by invitation only.

US DOE funding research into sustainable ammonia synthesis
Article

The US Department of Energy (DOE) is currently supporting six fundamental research projects that will develop "novel catalysts and mechanisms for nitrogen activation," which it hopes will lead to future sustainable ammonia synthesis technologies. These projects, announced in August 2016 and administered by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, aim "to investigate some of the outstanding scientific questions in the synthesis of ammonia (NH3) from nitrogen (N2) using processes that do not generate greenhouse gases."

Hydrogen Council - new global initiative launched at Davos
Article

This week, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the leaders of 13 global companies, representing more than EUR 1 trillion in annual revenues, announced the launch of the Hydrogen Council. This new global initiative is important for obvious reasons: it presents a compelling "united vision and long-term ambition" for hydrogen, it promises global engagement with "key stakeholders such as policy makers, business and hydrogen players, international agencies and civil society," and it pledges financial commitments to RD&D totaling EUR 10 billion over the next five years. It is important for a subtler reason too: it is the first hydrogen industry promotion I've seen that includes ammonia. It includes ammonia both implicitly, encompassing "hydrogen and its compounds," and explicitly, listing ammonia as a "renewable fuel" in its own right.

ARPA-E's vision for carbon neutral liquid fuels
Article

We wrote last month about the US Department of Energy funding ammonia fuel projects through ARPA-E's "REFUEL" program ("Renewable Energy to Fuels through Utilization of Energy-dense Liquids"). Although we introduced the funded projects in both the ammonia synthesis category and the ammonia fuel-use category, the REFUEL project merits further analysis as a whole because it describes a roadmap for the development of ammonia fuel systems, and identifies benchmarks for their commercial success.