Site items in: Funding Opportunities

US DOE funding research into sustainable ammonia synthesis
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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
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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
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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.

Breakthrough Energy Coalition targets carbon-free ammonia
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A multi-billion dollar clean energy innovation fund was launched last year, at the Paris climate conference. Led by Bill Gates, the private funding enterprise aimed to develop "groundbreaking new carbon-neutral technologies," without specifying details. Now, the Breakthrough Energy Coalition is starting work, and one of its initial Technical Quests is to make "Zero-GHG Ammonia Production" a reality.

ARPA-E’s “transformative” ammonia synthesis technologies
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The US Department of Energy's Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA-E) is funding projects with a view to commercializing low- and zero-carbon ammonia synthesis technologies. Grigorii Soloveichik, ARPA-E Program Director, described the aims and challenges of his agency's initiative and introduced the technologies currently in development in his keynote presentation at the recent NH3 Fuel Conference, in September 2016.

H2 @ Scale: US DOE's Request for Information
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The ammonia energy community has an opportunity to provide input to the United States Department of Energy (USDOE) as it defines priority areas for its new "H2 @ Scale" initiative. The USDOE posted a Request for Information (RFI) on September 9. Interested parties are invited to comment on all aspects of the H2 @ Scale concept. The deadline for comments is November 4. A link to the RFI is provided below.

US DOE: The REFUEL Project
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In April 2016, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) released a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for its Renewable Energy to Fuels through Utilization of Energy-dense Liquids (REFUEL) program. The focus of the program is carbon-neutral liquid fuels (CNLFs). In the DOE’s formulation, CNLFs are to be produced “from air and water using electrical or thermal energy from renewable sources.”