Welcome to the Ammonia Academic Wrap: a summary of all the latest papers, developments and emerging trends in the world of ammonia energy R&D. This week: "seamless" ammonia cracking tech from Northwestern, a new electrolysis catalyst, successful integration of ammonia synthesis and separation for improved efficiency, more research needed into transition metal catalysts for Haber Bosch, a novel, green power-to-ammonia to power system and a review on ammonia as a potential fuel.

Organised by a panel of young researchers — and for young researchers — Cardiff University, KAUST and Tohoku University hosted a virtual workshop on ammonia energy. Each group showed their most recent research developments through the two-day event, attracting 50+ participants from the three groups alone. The event included research introductions from the research leaders of each group as well as quizzes, discussion rooms, prizes. Each group selected 6 early career presenters to feature their latest work in the topics of chemistry and microflow reactors, laminar and turbulent flames and applications. Taking advantage of the discussion sessions, this workshop hopes to promote large scale international collaboration and a researcher exchange programme in ammonia energy.

Techno-Economic Challenges of Green Ammonia as an Energy Vector, a new textbook, was issued in September by scientific and technical publisher Elsevier. The 340-page volume was written by Agustin Valera-Medina of Cardiff University and Rene Banares-Alcantara of Oxford University. The book is a valuable consolidation of knowledge across the many aspects of ammonia energy, and seems destined to become a go-to reference for current and future technologists, project developers, and policy makers.

At this early point in the energy transition, many groups are formulating big-picture concepts for the design of a sustainable energy economy, and many more are developing discrete technologies that will be relevant as the transition advances. The multi-stakeholder H2020 European project known as “FLEXibilize combined cycle power plant through Power-to-X solutions using non-CONventional Fuels” (FLEXnCONFU) is coming from a different direction. Its premise is that construction of a bridge to the future should start now, and should be anchored in aspects of the current energy system that are likely to endure over the long-term.

Last week Agustin Valera-Medina, Associate Professor at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, told Ammonia Energy that work is underway on a £1.9 million (USD $2.3 million) project that will advance the frontiers of ammonia-gas turbine (AGT) technology. Valera-Medina is serving as the Principal Investigator of the Storage of Ammonia for Energy (SAFE) – AGT Pilot, a four-year effort that hopes to develop “a unique, competitive technology that can be implemented to support the hydrogen transition.”

ETN Global’s latest R&D Recommendation was released in October 2018.  ETN stands for European Turbine Network and its technology of interest is the gas turbine.  The 2018 Recommendation is notable because it is the first that includes ammonia on the R&D agenda.

The 2018 NH3 Energy Implementation Conference, the first of its kind, took place on November 1 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the U.S. The focus of the Conference was on steps – current and future – that will lead to implementation of ammonia energy in the global economy.  At the highest level, the Conference results validated the relevance and timeliness of the theme.  In the words of closing speaker Grigorii Soloveichik, Director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E REFUEL Program, the Conference strengthened his confidence that “ammonia is a great energy carrier ... with billions of dollars of potential in prospective markets.”

Ammonia as a Direct Fuel: fueling the decarbonized maritime industry Moderator: Agustin Valera-Medina, Cardiff University Niels de Vries, C-Job Naval Architects René Sejer Laursen, MAN ES Emile Herben, Yara

Ammonia blends can potentially become a breakthrough chemical for power generation, cooling storage and distribution of energy. Gas turbines and internal combustion engines are potential candidates for the use of the resource in an efficient way that will enable commissioning of combined cycles to power communities around Europe and around the world while serving as sources of heat and chemical storage. Therefore, development of these systems will bring to the market a safer, zero carbon fuel that can be used for multiple purposes, thus decentralizing power generation and increasing sustainability in the communities of the future whilst positioning the developing…

"Ammonia for Power" is an open-access literature review that includes over 300 citations for recent and ongoing research in the use of ammonia in engines, fuel cells, and turbines, as well as providing references to decades of historical case studies and publications. The review, written by a consortium of ammonia energy experts from the University of Cardiff, University of Oxford, the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council, and Tsinghua University in China, can be found in the November 2018 edition of Progress in Energy and Combustion Science.

During development of the technical aspects of any energy project, a social perspective needs to be considered. Public opinion is going to be a fundamental parameter to determine the role of renewables in the future, with decarbonisation meaning innovation towards a comprehensive plan that involves not only technology but also psychology and how these two can benefit from each other. Due to the importance of understanding public perception of ammonia, Cardiff University conducted a study focused on the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, which currently presents high revenues in agriculture and depends on ammonia as a fertiliser. An analysis of stakeholder’s perception of ammonia was carried out to understand the different barriers and drivers of each established group.

The second annual European Conference on Sustainable Ammonia Solutions has announced its full program, spread over two days, May 17 and 18, 2018, at Rotterdam Zoo in the Netherlands. The international cadre of speakers, representing a dozen countries from across Europe as well as the US, Canada, Israel, and Japan, will describe global developments in ammonia energy from the perspectives of industry, academia, and government agencies.

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.

In the last 12 months ... Researchers seeking to fire gas turbines with ammonia made significant strides toward realization of commercial-scale machines in both the U.K. and Japan. This means that electricity generation has become a realistic near-term use-case for ammonia energy.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) has published the program for its 2017 National Meeting, which takes place next month in Washington DC and includes a session dedicated to the "Ammonia Economy." The first day of the week-long meeting, Sunday August 20th, will feature a full morning of technical papers from the US, UK, and Japan, covering ammonia energy topics across three general areas: producing hydrogen from ammonia, developing new catalysts for ammonia synthesis and oxidation, and storing ammonia in solid chemical form.

The ammonia-fueled gas turbine (A-GT) seems destined to become one of the key technologies in the sustainable energy economy of the future.  Siemens AG, for one, features the A-GT in its vision for “Green Ammonia for Energy Storage and Beyond” and the demonstration system that the company is building at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the U.K.  Last month Ian Wilkinson, Siemens’ Programme Manager for the demonstration project, spoke about the project’s progress at the 1st European Power to Ammonia® Conference in Rotterdam in The Netherlands.  Although he devoted a slide to the A-GT, the detailed perspective came from another presentation at the conference.  This one was delivered by Dr. Agustin Valera-Medina, a Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University, one of Siemens’ main green ammonia collaborators.

In April 2016, Siemens AG announced that it will construct a plant at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxford to demonstrate the production of ammonia in an electrochemical reactor. The technology is seen as a facilitator of the use of ammonia synthesis as a method for storing renewably generated electricity. It involves lower pressures and temperatures than conventional synthesis with the Haber Bosch process. The project will test two different electrolyte chemistries using its 30 kilowatt electrochemical reactor.

On September 1st, academic journal Energy & Fuels published a new paper that features research coming out of the UK's Cardiff University and Ireland's University of Limerick. This study demonstrates a "reduced mechanism" for simulating the "robust numerical analyses with detailed chemistry" necessary for the "industrial implementation" of ammonia in gas turbine combustion for "future power generation." Here's the abstract:

Ammonia has been promoted as a viable candidate as an indirect hydrogen fuel vector, due to its high hydrogen content (17.8 wt%) and its ability to store 30% more energy per liquid volume than liquid hydrogen [1]. Ammonia can be safely stored in very high gravimetric and volumetric density in solid state halide materials [2-3], for example, at 109 gL-1 for Mg(NH3)6Cl2 compared to 108 gL-1 for liquid ammonia. These solid state ammonia coordination complexes, known as ammines, have attracted much recent attention (for examples see [4-5] and references there within) with a view to their use as solid state…