| Green ammonia
traded energy vector. Similar statements could be made in connection with methanol. Merchant grey ammonia pricing has been influenced by natural gas costs and supply vs demand balance. The pricing volatility of grey hydrogen and lack of availability of excess capacity for international trade are key drivers for the development of green ammonia to supplement existing grey ammonia production.
Ocean trade
The concept of shipping green hydrogen on the oceans will become reality in several major international projects. Within Europe, green hydrogen will be converted to green ammonia in Portugal and shipped to the port of Rotterdam in the Madoqua Power2X project, based in Sines on the western coast of Portugal.
The core of the Madoqua Power2X project will be renewable wind and solar power generation flowing into 500 MW of electrolyser capacity. This €1 billion investment will be capable of producing enough green hydrogen to generate 500 000 tonnes per year of green ammonia. Receiving terminals, such as the new ACE ammonia terminal in the Port of Rotterdam, are being planned to receive the shipments. ACE lies in 16.5m of water depth in a location where 400 m long ships regularly sail and berth. An intercontinental green ammonia supply chain will also be established from western Australia to Germany. The German LNG terminal at Brunsbüttel, on the North Sea at the western end of the Kiel canal in northern Germany, has recently announced plans to incorporate a world-scale ammonia storage tank in the terminal scheme in addition to the two previously planned LNG storage tanks.
The shipping cost for liquid ammonia over the Australia to Germany route is only circa 3% of the total landed cost in Germany. By far the major cost element, at about 65%, is the cost of green hydrogen production and the majority of that is related to renewable power generation from wind and solar sources.
Above: Comparison of hydrogen transport options, in terms of volume and distance
For many years, the idea of converting green H2 to green ammonia has been in question due to
the high costs of reconversion of the ammonia to hydrogen at the destination. Approximately 25% of the energy value of the ammonia is lost through the reconversion process. The cracking technology to perform the reconversion is relatively immature and the equipment is therefore expensive to purchase and operate.
However, as more and more use cases for green ammonia are being developed the need to crack the ammonia to hydrogen is diminishing. In many cases, it is envisaged that locally produced green hydrogen can be used for the applications that require hydrogen and a parallel supply chain for long distance imports of green ammonia will exist to support applications that can use the ammonia directly and avoid the reconversion costs.
Expanding applications Much of the excitement about using hydrogen is related to mobility. In fuel cell electric vehicles
(FCEVs) hydrogen is converted to electrical power using catalysts in a fuel cell. The electrical power then drives the vehicle, like a battery electric vehicle. In mobility applications, the fuel cells are generally of the PEM type due to the requirement to cope with the high vibration environment. PEM fuel cells prefer hydrogen.
For land-based applications and in some seaborne applications solid oxide fuel cells can be used. They are robust enough to serve in these applications, but they are not as tough as PEM fuel cells. Solid oxide fuel cells can operate with a broad range of feedstocks including hydrogen, ammonia, and liquid hydrocarbons such as methanol or diesel.
A solid oxide fuel cell manufactured by Sunfire will be used on Viking Energy, an oilfield services vessel that is operated by Eidesvik in support of Equinor’s offshore activities. Viking Energy will use green ammonia which will be produced by Yara at Porsgrunn in Norway. Nel will provide the electrolysers for the green hydrogen production. There is also potential to use ammonia in maritime internal combustion engines, but the focus of this project is to prove the viability of ammonia for maritime fuel cell applications. Ammonia is also being used for thermal power generation by JERA in Japan. A demonstration project is underway on unit 4 of the Hekinan coal fired power station. This unit has a power generation capacity of 1 GW, one quarter of the plant’s generation capacity. About 20% of the power generation capacity will be decarbonised by co-firing green ammonia with the coal. Mitsubishi Power is developing ammonia fired power generation turbines (as are other GT technology providers). These will be used in place of gas fired turbines at power generation facilities in Asia and Europe. At present, LNG is imported largely for the purposes of power generation. In the future, the LNG can be replaced with green ammonia. Looking ahead, the traded tonnages of green ammonia for power generation are likely to dwarf the traded volumes of green ammonia for existing applications.
www.modernpowersystems.com | January/February 2023 | 31
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