South Korea has featured in many Ammonia Energy news updates, but often in a scatter gun fashion that lacked the momentum of ammonia energy announcements coming from the other side of the Korea Strait. Now, South Korea is ready to step out from Japan’s shadow as a clean energy innovator and deployer in its own right. We’re seeing the beginnings of a well-articulated strategy to achieve society-wide decarbonisation in South Korea, with a starring role for clean hydrogen and clean ammonia.

Ammonia has become one of the most important chemicals with its versatility since the Haber-Bosch process was invented. Recently, ammonia has been getting interests because of its possibility as a hydrogen carrier. Since ammonia has high energy density and carbon-free characteristics, using ammonia as a fuel of solid oxide fuel cells is advantageous. However, the Haber-Bosch process spends much electricity because of the high pressure condition, and the process consumes more than 1% of energy consumption worldwide. Therefore, the development of a new method for the ammonia production is necessary. In this study, solid oxide based electrolytic cells were fabricated…

The shortage of fossil fuels and emission of carbon dioxide to the environment have attracted an interest in discovering renewable energy as the next generation energy source. Owing to its intermittent and unpredictable nature, however, excess renewable energy needs to be stored and reused on demand. In the regard, hydrogen, which possesses a high gravimetric energy density and carbon free combustion process, has been extensively researched as a promising renewable energy carrier. However, the distribution and storage of hydrogen still raise important challenges due to the low volumetric energy density of hydrogen for its wide utilization. Currently, gaseous hydrogen transportation…

In the last 12 months ... The research community has made great progress toward solving the "selectivity challenge" in electrochemical ammonia synthesis. Although, rather than an actual solution, mostly what we have is a range of sophisticated work-arounds that succeed in making this problem moot.

One of the many encouraging announcements at the recent Power-to-Ammonia conference in Rotterdam was the news that the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) has extended funding for its electrochemical ammonia synthesis research program by another three years, pushing the project forward through 2019. KIER's research target for 2019 is significant: to demonstrate an ammonia production rate of 1x10^-7 mol/s·cm². If the KIER team can hit this target, not only would it be ten thousand times better than their 2012 results but, according to the numbers I'll provide below, it would be the closest an electrochemical ammonia synthesis technology has come to being commercially competitive.

Electrochemical synthesis of ammonia from water and nitrogen at atmospheric pressure could be an alternative to the current ammonia synthesis process (i.e. Harbor-Bosch) and solve the inherent problems of the process including its high energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission. This study reports electrochemical ammonia synthesis from water and nitrogen in molten salts at atmospheric pressure and temperatures exceeding 623K. Modifications on surface materials of the nitrogen activation electrode were made, tested, and their ammonia synthesis rates were compared.