Solar Ammonia
Yara’s Australian unit announced plans to build a pilot plant to produce ammonia using solar power. This is a key step in Australia’s efforts to develop its economy around clean energy exports, and could lead to a new system of global trade in which renewable ammonia is an energy commodity.
Demonstration plant: cost-competitive electrolyzers, solar ammonia In March 2017, International Energy Agency Senior Analyst Cedric Philibert reached several striking conclusions in an essay on the economics of producing hydrogen from renewably generated electricity. First, industry may have already reached an inflection point where the unsubsidized cost of producing renewable hydrogen via electrolysis in certain geographies can compete with the cost of producing hydrogen via steam methane reforming. Second, the geographies where this could apply are those where producers can draw on multiple renewable sources – for example, wind and photovoltaics – so that they can obtain electricity at a low price and achieve high utilization of their plant capacity. Third, given the fact that many desirable production locations are remote from end-use markets, ammonia could be employed as a well-proven, low-cost option for linking producer and customer. Finally, if ammonia were to be employed not just as a fertilizer but as an energy carrier, a whole new system of global trade in renewable energy could emerge.
In one potential trade pairing, officials are examining options for meeting Japanese energy needs with Australian renewable resources. Australia is already one of Japan’s leading suppliers of coal and natural gas. Agencies such as the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) made it clear during the year that the country intends to build on this position. In another potential trade pairing, the CEO of Siemens Pacific wrote of plans to export Australian solar ammonia to Germany, describing “projects in discussion right now” to develop a 10,000 km2 solar field in the Australian desert that would generate 500 GW. This would be enough to produce 1 million tons of ammonia per day, roughly twice today’s total global production capacity, for export as a carbon-free energy commodity.
These moves set the stage for Yara’s September 2017 unveiling of plans for a “solar ammonia” demonstration near its plant in Pilbara in Western Australia. The company’s production concept appears to dovetail with Nel Hydrogen’s recent moves toward large-scale deployment of electrolyzers (cited by Philibert in his essay) with associated reductions in capital cost burden. Yara sees the potential of solar ammonia unfolding across several stages, from reduction of the company’s own carbon footprint to entrée of green ammonia into global energy markets.
Cédric Philibert Senior Energy Analyst
The vast majority of this industrial hydrogen is produced from coal gasification or steam methane reforming (SMR), both of which need a lot of energy and generate significant carbon dioxide emissions. A much smaller proportion of hydrogen is produced via electrolysis of water, which can be a far more sustainable method if the electricity is produced from renewable sources.
Indeed, producing hydrogen via renewable energy is not a new idea. Until the 1960s, hydrogen from hydropower-based electrolysis in Norway was used to make ammonia – a key ingredient for agricultural fertilizers. But low gas prices and the emergence of SMR meant this technology became less fashionable during an era when carbon emissions were not a consideration.
But with increasingly lower renewable costs, renewables-based hydrogen production could once again be competitive with SMR. For example, regions with abundant hydropower, or hydropower and geothermal resources such as Iceland or Norway, are possible choices for siting electrolyzers. Newly built wind farms in Morocco, and solar plants in Dubai and Chile, where electricity costs are around $30/MWh, could also be competitive with SMR paired with carbon capture and storage.
Price is not the only consideration however. To be competitive, the electroylzers would have to have relatively high utilization factors – that is, they would have to run for several thousand hours per year.
But under the right conditions, producing industrial hydrogen in this fashion could have massive consequences for the sustainability of one industry in particular – agriculture. About half of industrial hydrogen is used in ammonia production. Ammonia production alone is responsible for about 360 million tonnes of CO2 emissions each year, or about 1% of the world’s total emissions. By 2050, we expect that the consumption of ammonia will increase by around 60%.
Places that meet these two conditions – low prices and a high utilization factor – could be found in sunny, windy regions with the right combination of solar plants and wind farms. Based on extensive wind and solar geospatial data, preliminary analyses reveal a number of large areas with this combination.
Some of the areas with the best resources, in China and in the US, are far from fertilizer demand centres but both electricity and ammonia could be transported. Other places, such as Western Australia, Western Sahara, the horn of Africa or Patagonia to name some, may also be very far from demand but they offer large sparsely-populated areas and have access to oceans. In that case, ammonia plants would likely be sited directly next to the electrolysers.
Perhaps this year’s biggest advance in this busy arena came from Japan, where researchers at Kyoto University achieved “the world’s largest power generation output of an NH3 fuel cell,” with efficiency in excess of 50% for 1,000 hours of continuous operation – the duration might be the most impressive aspect here.
According to Grigorii Soloveichik, program manager of REFUEL: “Ammonia fuel cell technology has the potential to be widely used in long term energy storage and the transportation sector (UAVs, range extenders, APUs). Fuel cells can convert ammonia, which can be easily stored in liquid form, to electricity with efficiencies higher than that using internal combustion engines.
In June 2018, MAN Diesel & Turbo rebranded itself MAN Energy Solutions, reflecting the maritime engine market leader’s “strategic and technological transformation” towards sustainability. The company was “taking a stand for the Paris Climate Agreement and the global pursuit of a carbon-neutral economy.” According to Uwe Lauber, Chairman of the Board, “our activities have a significant impact on the global economy. In shipping, for example, we move more than half of the global stream of goods … [and] the path to decarbonising the maritime economy starts with fuel decarbonisation, especially in container shipping.”
This week, the company took a significant step towards realizing its vision, disclosing that it is “pressing ahead with developing … an ammonia-fuelled engine.” This builds on the technology development pathway that MAN ES presented at the NH3 Energy+ Topical Conference at Pittsburgh in October 2018. The budget and timeline are set: the €5 million (USD$5.7 million) project will last two to three years and, if the shipowners decide to deploy the finished product, “the first ammonia engine could then be in operation by early 2022.”
All great news. So you could convert ammonia into hydrogen, or use ammonia in fuel-cells, or use it directly as fuel! Don’t try to “reform” batteries for BEVs. That’s a fool’s errand. We need to respect the chemistry. Learn to love the molecules.