Vietnamese renewable energy project developer The Green Solutions will partner with ECONNECT Energy, thyssenkrupp and Black & Veatch to develop a new renewable hydrogen & ammonia production plant in Tra Vinh province, Vietnam.

A few hundred kilometers to the north, Singapore-based Enterprize Energy is developing a significant offshore wind project with both grid generating and Power-to-X elements. The 3.4 GW Thang Long wind farm will produce grid electricity, renewable hydrogen for local markets and renewable ammonia for export.

As green and blue ammonia begin to be utilized as a zero-carbon marine fuel, we will see the need for substantial infrastructure development to support the demand. The green and blue ammonia value chains differ in the hydrogen production method used; green ammonia being generated from water electrolysis and blue ammonia being generated from a conventional pathway, using natural gas, but with the addition of carbon capture. The level of commercialization and the relative total installed costs for green and blue ammonia plants will be discussed.

Last month brought news of "the world’s first ammonia ready vessel.” According to an American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) press release, the vessel, currently under construction in China, will comply “with the ABS Ammonia Ready Level 1 requirements, indicating it is designed to be converted to run on ammonia in the future.” When completed, the 274-meter ship (and possibly two others of identical design) will join the fleet of Avin International.

Infrastructure is key to realising the full potential of ammonia energy, enabling new markets and expanding the existing ones. By 2050 the hydrogen (and by extension, ammonia) market could be 20 times larger than it is today. What future possibilities are there to expand global ammonia production (currently 180 million tonnes per year) or trade volumes across the world’s oceans (currently 18 million tonnes per year)? On November 18, 2020, the Ammonia Energy Association (AEA) hosted a panel discussion moderated by Daniel Morris from KBR, as well as panel members Anthony Teo from DNV GL, Oliver Hatfield from Argus Media, and Michael Goff from Black & Veatch as part of the recent Ammonia Energy Conference. The panel’s insights from a number of different perspectives - market analytics, ship building and operating, as well as pipeline engineering - demonstrated ammonia's potential to become a low- or zero-carbon fuel of choice for the future. Current infrastructure can be adapted, new infrastructure can be built and operated cheaply, and lessons from previous fuel transitions can be taken on board to make the uptake of ammonia energy as smooth as possible.

Ammonia can be used as an energy carrier to produce a low carbon fuel that can be transported around the globe. Infrastructure for transporting ammonia is already in place, but as more ammonia is used as an energy source, addition transportation capacity will be required. This presentation will discuss technical and economic data for ammonia distribution. The focus will be on pipeline and ocean transport. A perspective will be provided to identify the typical required infrastructure to produce, store and distribute of the ammonia for the equivalent power plant energy requirement.