Site items in: Solar Ammonia

Ammonia plant revamp to decarbonize: Yara Pilbara
Article

This week, Yara announced major progress toward producing "green ammonia" at its plant in Pilbara, Australia. Its new partner in this project is ENGIE, the global energy and services group, which last year made a major commitment to developing large-scale renewable hydrogen projects. I first reported Yara's plans for a solar ammonia demonstration at its Pilbara plant in September 2017. This week's announcement means that the Pilbara project has moved to the next feasibility phase. However, major elements of the project have already been designed and built: during last year's scheduled turnaround for plant maintenance, the hydrogen piping tie-in was completed - meaning that the Haber-Bosch unit is ready to receive hydrogen directly, as soon as an electrolyzer has been built to supply it with renewable feedstock.

Creating a Redox Materials Database for Solar-Thermochemical Air Separation and Fuels Production
Presentation

Converting heat from renewable sources into other forms of energy is considered an essential factor in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. For instance, high temperatures can be reached using concentrated solar power (CSP), and the thus-captured energy can be converted into so-called solar fuels via thermochemical processes. These consist of the partial reduction of a redox material, usually a metal oxide, at high temperatures following the exothermic re-oxidation of this material at a lower temperature level using steam or CO2, which are thus converted into hydrogen or carbon monoxide, respectively. These two gases can be combined to generate syngas…

Green Ammonia Plants, Commercially Available Today
Article

In the last 12 months ... Green ammonia pilot plants began operations in the UK and Japan, and new demonstration plants were announced in Australia, Denmark, Morocco, and the Netherlands (more, yet to be announced, are in development). Fertilizer company CEOs spoke about how green ammonia fits their corporate strategy. And all four of the global licensors of ammonia technology made it abundantly clear that they are ready and willing to build your green ammonia plant, today.

Science Publishes Feature Article on Ammonia Energy
Article

On July 13, Science magazine, the flagship publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), published a 2,800-word “feature article" on ammonia energy. The article, headlined, “Liquid sunshine: Ammonia made from sun, air, and water could turn Australia into a renewable energy superpower,” is uniformly open-minded and upbeat.  Its opening section ends with a quote from Monash University Professor of Physics and Chemistry Doug MacFarlane; “’Liquid ammonia is liquid energy,’ he says. ‘It's the sustainable technology we need.’” MacFarlane helped launch the Australian chapter of the NH3 Fuel Association.

Future Ammonia Technologies: Plasma, Membrane, Redox
Article

I wrote recently about two pathways for ammonia production technology development: improvements on Haber-Bosch, or electrochemical synthesis. Last week, I covered some of these Haber-Bosch improvements; next week, I'll write about electrochemical processes. This week, I want to write about some innovations that don't fit this two-way categorization: they don't use electrochemistry and they don't build upon the Haber-Bosch process, and that might be the only thing that links them.

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

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.

Screening Binary Redox Pairs for Solar Thermochemical Ammonia Synthesis Using Machine Learned Predictions of Gibbs Formation Energies at Finite Temperatures
Presentation

Solar thermochemical ammonia synthesis (STAS) is a reduction/oxidation (redox) cycle which enables the production of ammonia (NH3) from air, water, and concentrated sunlight. In this process, a metal nitride (MN) is oxidized by steam to produce a metal oxide (MO) and NH3; the resulting MO is reduced at high temperature (driven by concentrated solar radiation) and subsequently used to reduce atmospheric nitrogen (N2) and reform the MN and restart the NH3 synthesis cycle. The identification of optimal redox pairs (MO/MN) for this process has been historically limited by the lack of thermochemical data (i.e., Gibbs formation energies at finite temperatures)…

Our Iowa Renewable Hydrogen and Ammonia Generation System
Presentation

The presentation will summarize the development of the demonstration size renewable fuel and fertilizer system on my Iowa farm. Solar power, water, and air are used to make hydrogen and ammonia fuel used to power a modified John Deere 7810 tractor. The ammonia can also be used to fertilize corn cropland. The development of the ammonia reactor will be described and its performance discussed. There are no carbon emissions in either the generation or consumption of the hydrogen and ammonia.