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Green ammonia demonstration plants now operational, in Oxford and Fukushima
Article

Green ammonia demonstration plants now operational, in Oxford and Fukushima

Trevor Brown June 29, 2018

Two new pilot projects for producing "green ammonia" from renewable electricity are now up and running and successfully producing ammonia. In April 2018, the Ammonia Manufacturing Pilot Plant for Renewable Energy started up at the Fukushima Renewable Energy Institute - AIST (FREA) in Japan. Earlier this week, Siemens launched operations at its Green Ammonia Demonstrator, at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory outside Oxford in the UK. The commercial product coming out of these plants is not ammonia, however, it is knowledge. While both the FREA and Siemens plants are of similar scale, with respective ammonia capacities of 20 and 30 kg per day, they have very different objectives. At FREA, the pilot project supports catalyst development with the goal of enabling efficient low-pressure, low-temperature ammonia synthesis. At Siemens, the pilot will provide insights into the business case for ammonia as a market-flexible energy storage vector.

Australia's Woodside Petroleum Considers Ammonia as a Hydrogen Carrier
Article

Australia's Woodside Petroleum Considers Ammonia as a Hydrogen Carrier

Stephen H. Crolius May 24, 2018

At last week’s Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association Conference, Woodside Petroleum’s chief executive officer Peter Coleman spoke about the “huge” opportunity in hydrogen energy that will develop for the company over the next 10-15 years.  Coleman sees the Japanese market for hydrogen as a promising destination for Woodside’s substantial reserves of natural gas, and indicated the company is evaluating alternative methods of hydrogen transport including as liquid H2, a liquid organic hydride, and ammonia.

Yara's N-Tech Platform: Making Strides with Green Ammonia
Article

Yara's N-Tech Platform: Making Strides with Green Ammonia

Stephen H. Crolius April 05, 2018

Yara International, one of the world’s largest ammonia producers, is making strides in its development of green ammonia as a fertilizer, chemical intermediate, and energy carrier.  The progress is documented in the company’s 2017 annual report, released last week, and in more detail in a presentation delivered in late February at the 2018 Nitrogen + Syngas Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Renewable ammonia demonstration plant announced in South Australia
Article

Renewable ammonia demonstration plant announced in South Australia

Trevor Brown February 16, 2018

This week, the government of South Australia announced a "globally-­significant demonstrator project," to be built by the hydrogen infrastructure company Hydrogen Utility (H2U). The renewable hydrogen power plant will cost AUD$117.5 million ($95 million USD), and will be built by ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions with construction beginning in 2019. The plant will comprise a 15 MW electrolyzer system, to produce the hydrogen, and two technologies for converting the hydrogen back into electricity: a 10MW gas turbine and 5MW fuel cell. The plant will also include a small but significant ammonia plant, making it "among the first ever commercial facilities to produce distributed ammonia from intermittent renewable resources."

The capital intensity of small-scale ammonia plants
Article

The capital intensity of small-scale ammonia plants

Trevor Brown January 19, 2018

The list of investment drivers for building new ammonia plants in the US over the last few years was short, beginning and ending with cheap natural gas. Markets change, however, and the investment drivers for the next generation of new ammonia plants might include low cost electrolyzers, low cost renewable power, carbon taxes, and global demand for ammonia as a carbon-free energy vector. For this to make sense, however, ammonia needs to be produced without fossil fuel inputs. This is perfectly possible using Haber-Bosch technology with electrolyzers, but today's wind and solar power plants exist on a smaller scale than could support a standard (very big) Haber-Bosch plant. So, to produce renewable ammonia, small-scale ammonia production is essential. This time series chart shows the capital intensity of today’s ammonia plants. Together, the data illustrate competitive advantages of alternative investment strategies, and demonstrate a shift away from the prior trend toward (and received wisdom of) monolithic mega-plants that rely on a natural gas feedstock.

Future Ammonia Technologies: Electrochemical (part 3)
Article

Future Ammonia Technologies: Electrochemical (part 3)

Trevor Brown December 28, 2017

This series of articles on the future of ammonia synthesis began with a report on the NH3 Energy+ conference presentation by Grigorii Soloveichik, Program Director at the US Department of Energy's ARPA-E, who categorized the technologies as being either improvements on Haber-Bosch or electrochemical (with exceptions). ARPA-E invests in "transformational, high-risk, early-stage research," and recently began funding ammonia synthesis technologies, not to make renewable fertilizer but to produce "energy-dense zero-carbon liquid fuel." This article will introduce the six electrochemical technologies currently in development with funding from ARPA-E.

Renewable Energy for Industry: IEA's vision for green ammonia as feedstock, fuel, and energy trade
Article

Renewable Energy for Industry: IEA's vision for green ammonia as feedstock, fuel, and energy trade

Trevor Brown November 10, 2017

This morning in Beijing, China, the International Energy Agency (IEA) launched a major new report with a compelling vision for ammonia's role as a "hydrogen-rich chemical" in a low-carbon economy. Green ammonia would be used by industry "as feedstock, process agent, and fuel," and its production from electrolytic hydrogen would spur the commercial deployment of "several terawatts" of new renewable power. These terawatts would be for industrial markets, additional to all prior estimates of renewable deployment required to serve electricity markets. At this scale, renewable ammonia would, by merit of its ease of storage and transport, enable renewable energy trading across continents. The IEA's report, Renewable Energy for Industry, will be highlighted later this month at the COP23 in Bonn, Germany, and is available now from the IEA's website.

Ammonia Renewable Energy Fuel Systems at Continental Scale
Presentation

Ammonia Renewable Energy Fuel Systems at Continental Scale

William Leighty

We must soon “run the world on renewables” but cannot, and should not try to, accomplish this entirely with electricity transmission. New, abundant, low-cost, unconventional natural gas supplies are finite; burning adds CO2 to Earth’s atmosphere. Humanity’s goal must be nothing less than: Transforming the world’s largest industry from ~80% fossil to ~100% renewable, CO2-emission-free energy sources as quickly as we prudently and profitably can. We should now carefully consider using pipeline networks, rather than the electricity grid, for solving the three salient technical problems of renewable energy (RE) at lower cost: Transmission: from diverse, stranded, remote, rich RE resources…

Renewable Hydrogen in Fukushima and a Bridge to the Future
Article

Renewable Hydrogen in Fukushima and a Bridge to the Future

Stephen H. Crolius October 19, 2017

On August 1, 2017 the Japan Government’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) announced that it will proceed with funding for the construction of a hydrogen production plant in Namie Township, about ten kilometers from the site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.  The project’s budget is not mentioned, but the installation is projected to be “the largest scale in the world” -- in other words, a real bridge to the future and not a demonstration project.  The project no doubt has a variety of motivations, not least the symbolic value of a renewable hydrogen plant rising in the shadow of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear station.  In economic terms, though, it appears to be a dead end.  This is unfortunate because a similarly conceived project based on ammonia could be a true bridge-building step that aligns with leading-edge developments elsewhere in the world.