Site items in: Wind Ammonia

Process Superstructures and the Production of Cost-Advantaged Ammonia
Article

At the 2017 NH3 Energy+ Conference, graduate student Doga Demirhan reported on an ongoing investigation at the Energy Institute at Texas A&M University. The work involved evaluation of options for an ammonia production system and concluded that biomass could be an economically viable feedstock under current, real-world conditions. This is a notable outcome. Just as notable is how it was reached.

Ammonia from Offshore Wind: a techno-economic review on the US East Coast
Article

A new study examines the technologies needed to produce renewable ammonia from offshore wind in the US, and analyzes the lifetime economics of such an operation. This is the latest in a years-long series of papers by a team of researchers from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). And it is by far the closest they have come to establishing sustainable ammonia as being cost-competitive with fossil ammonia.

Sustainable Energy for Wales: Tidal and Wind with Ammonia Storage
Article

As part of the sustainable agenda of the UK, the government, research institutions and various enterprises have looked for options to reduce the carbon footprint of the country while ensuring energy independence for several years. As a response, one of the alternatives has been to introduce the use of marine energy via the implementation of a barrage in the Severn Estuary or the development and implementation of Tidal Lagoons located around the Welsh coast. From these alternatives, the tidal lagoon concept seems to be most feasible. Hybrid tidal and wind energy systems will produce vast amounts of energy during off-peak hours that will require the use of energy storage technologies - the size of each proposed tidal lagoon ranges close to ~1.5 GW. Currently, companies involved in the development of these complexes are thinking of batteries, pumped hydro, and ammonia as the potential candidates to provide storage for these vast amounts of energy.

Improvement of Haber-Bosch: Adsorption vs. Absorption
Article

At the recent NH3 Energy+ Topical Conference, Grigorii Soloveichik described the future of ammonia synthesis technologies as a two-way choice: Improvement of Haber-Bosch or Electrochemical Synthesis. Two such Haber-Bosch improvement projects, which received ARPA-E-funding under Soloveichik's program direction, also presented papers at the conference. They each take different approaches to the same problem: how to adapt the high-pressure, high-temperature, constant-state Haber-Bosch process to small-scale, intermittent renewable power inputs. One uses adsorption, the other uses absorption, but both remove ammonia from the synthesis loop, avoiding one of Haber-Bosch's major limiting factors: separation of the product ammonia.

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.

Design Optimization of a Distributed Ammonia Generation System
Presentation

Distributed ammonia generation located near farms is a promising alternative to the current practice of large-scale, centralized production. This production mode would reduce the need for transportation of ammonia over long distances currently caused by the mismatch between production and consumption locations. In addition, a small-scale ammonia synthesis process could more easily take advantage of distributed power generation based on wind or sunlight to reduce energy costs and lessen the dependence on fossil fuels. Distributed, renewables-based fertilizer production would largely insulate farmers against market uncertainty while also increasing the sustainability of the agricultural supply chain. However, a technically proven, economically…

Lower Pressure Ammonia Synthesis
Presentation

Ammonia is a very important chemical, mainly produced through the Haber-Bosch process. This process requires high temperature (>400 °C) and pressure (>150 bar) in order to ensure fast kinetics and high conversions, respectively.1 As a result, ammonia synthesis is known to be very complex and energy-intensive.2 To alleviate the complexity and energy requirements of ammonia synthesis, and to reduce the CO2 emissions, we are proposing an innovative reaction-absorption process to synthesize carbon-free ammonia in small plants.3 This green ammonia can be synthesized in wind-powered plants, with hydrogen from electrolysis of water and nitrogen from pressure swing adsorption of air.4 In…

The Role of
Presentation

Ammonia has the potential to contribute significantly to the decarbonisation of energy systems, by offering a practical, carbon-free hydrogen storage and transportation vector as well as a green fuel in its own right. To better understand the prospects and challenges surrounding the use of ammonia in energy systems, Siemens is leading a collaborative project to build and test an ammonia-based energy storage system at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK. Together with its project partners (the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council, the University of Oxford and the University of Cardiff), and supported by Innovate UK, Siemens will demonstrate…

Power to Ammonia: alternative synthesis technologies
Article

The Institute for Sustainable Process Technology (ISPT) recently published a detailed analysis of three business cases for producing renewable ammonia from electricity: Power to Ammonia. The feasibility study concludes that, in the near term, ammonia production using clean electricity will likely rely on a combination of two old-established, proven technologies: electrolysis and Haber-Bosch (E-HB). To reach this conclusion, however, the study also assessed a range of alternative technologies, which I summarize in this article.

The Hydrogen Consensus
Article

Let’s say there is such a thing as the “hydrogen consensus.” Most fundamentally, the consensus holds that hydrogen will be at the center of the sustainable energy economy of the future. By definition, hydrogen from fossil fuels will be off the table. Hydrogen from biomass will be on the table but the amount that can be derived sustainably will be limited by finite resources like land and water. This will leave a yawning gap (in the U.S., 60-70% of total energy consumption) that will be filled with the major renewables -- wind, solar, and geothermal -- and nuclear energy. This may be as far as the consensus goes today, but more detail is now emerging on the global system of production and use that could animate a hydrogen economy.