Advanced BioFuels USA – Yara’s Green Ammonia Behemoth: The 500,000 Tonner that Will De-fossilize Agriculture

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) ... Yara announces plans to fully electrify its ammonia plant in Porsgrunn, Norway with the potential to cut 800,000 tons of CO2 per annum, equivalent to the emissions from 300,000 passenger cars. ... Yara’s the world’s largest ammonia fertilizer company, has 16,000 employees and operations in over 60 countries, and revenues of USD 12.9 billion.

Ammonia – more than just a fertilizer or cleanser, it’s a hydrogen carrier

As Yara observed, “Ammonia’s chemical properties make it ideally suited for the hydrogen economy. It does not require cooling to extreme temperatures, and has a higher energy density than liquid hydrogen, making it more efficient to transport and store. Ammonia is therefore the most promising hydrogen carrier and zero-carbon shipping fuel.”

They say: Ammonia is therefore the most promising hydrogen carrier and zero-carbon shipping fuel. Absolutely, there’s a lot of hydrogen in ammonia compared to other molecules. Ammonia is 18 percent hydrogen by weight, only methane (20 percent) has more hydrogen content among common, stable molecules. By contrast, water is 11 percent hydrogen and typical biomass is around 8 or 9 percent biomass taking in account the water weight.

But, is there a real reason to make ammonia as a transport fuel? Rather, there are plenty of applications in fertilizers, green chemistry and stationary power before we need to turn to solving the problems of hydrogen transport fuels. For example, the world makes roughly 175 million tons of fertilizer, and needs millions more tons of green hydrogen for chemical applications.

... In the end, we’re obtaining hydrogen from water and nitrogen from the air, and we’re using green electrons to perform the electrolysis to split the water into oxygen and hydrogen, and the same energy also powers the separation technology to obtain pure nitrogen from the air.

Once you have nitrogen and hydrogen, the Haber-Bosch process is used to produce ammonia.

What’s been the hold-up?

Two factors. First, natural gas is cheap. Secondly, natural gas proprietors have been running a popular, long-term campaign to label natural gas as a ‘clean fuel’. Yes, it’s cleaner than petroleum or coal — the distinction arose because natural gas burns without a visible smoke or soot, and for sure natural gas has an advantage over petroleum or coal in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. It’s about 30 percent cleaner. But is cleaner the same as clean? Markets have been confused about what is a clean fuel until, the adoption of standards like California’s LCFS, which clearly demonstrates that biogas is worth far more when emissions are considered than fossil gas, for example.

Green ammonia, as Yara will make it, has far lower emissions than fossil-based ammonia. But there are not a lot of ways to monetize that advantage outside of an LCFS, and the battle has generally been fought in terms of emissions preference instead of emissions price, and the public remains confused. So, the journey to green ammonia has been slower than it should be.

Yara aims to capture opportunities within shipping, agriculture and industrial applications, in a market expected to grow by 60 percent over the next two decades.

The project would eliminate one of Norway’s largest static CO2 sources, and would be a major contributor for Norway to reach its Paris agreement commitments. READ MORE

Excerpt from Chemical & Engineering News: That massive carbon footprint exists because although the Haber-Bosch process represents a huge technological advancement, it’s always been an energy-hungry one. The reaction, which runs at temperatures around 500 °C and at pressures up to about 20 MPa, sucks up about 1% of the world’s total energy production. It belched up to about 451 million t of CO₂ in 2010, according to the Institute for Industrial Productivity. That total accounts for roughly 1% of global annual CO₂ emissions, more than any other industrial chemical-making reaction....

The carbon footprint of ammonia synthesis goes well beyond its energy demands. Hydrogen used for the reaction comes from natural gas, coal, or oil through processes that release CO₂. According to a 2013 joint report from the International Energy Agency, the International Council of Chemical Associations, and the Society for Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, CO₂ emissions from hydrogen production account for more than half of those from the entire ammonia production process. In total, from hydrocarbon feedstocks to NH₃ synthesis, every NH₃ molecule generated releases one molecule of CO₂ as a coproduct.

And our hunger for ammonia fertilizer is increasing. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, nitrogen fertilizer demand is projected to increase from 110 million t in 2015 to almost 119 million t by 2020.

Chemists and engineers across the world are trying to make ammonia synthesis sustainable. Some are working to power the reaction with renewable energy sources and to generate hydrogen without fossil fuels. Others want to find a more efficient reaction than Haber-Bosch to synthesize ammonia. The researchers admit that progress has been slow but worth it. READ MORE