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.

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.

Ammonia has a potential as a carbon-free energy carrier since it contains 17.6wt% of hydrogen and can be easily stored and transported safely and efficiently. The state-of-the-art industrial process for ammonia production is the Haber-Bosch process. Although high temperature (450–500 °C) and pressure (150–300 bar) are used to dissociate triple-bonded nitrogen and to maximize the ammonia formation, the efficiency of the Haber–Bosch process is limited to 10–15%. Moreover, the process accompanies high greenhouse gases emission since hydrogen is produced from natural gas. In order to overcome the drawbacks of the Haber-Bosch process, the electrochemical ammonia synthesis has been developed as…

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.

Both a spark ignition engine and a compression ignition engine are considered to use ammonia as primary fuel in this study. First, in a spark ignition engine, an ammonia-gasoline dual fuel system was developed and both ammonia and gasoline are injected separately into the intake manifold in liquid phase. As ammonia burns 1/6 time slower than gasoline, the spark timing is needed to be advanced near 40 degree before top dead center. The test engine showed quite high variation in the power output with ammonia supply more than 70% of the total heat value. As a result, 70% of gasoline…

Besides its current applications, ammonia (i.e. carbon-free fuel) could play important roles in preparing for oil depletion and coping with climate change since it releases only nitrogen and water when burned. Ammonia contains 17.6wt% of hydrogen and has significant advantages over hydrogen in storing and transporting energy. The current industrial ammonia production is based on the Haber-Bosch process, which has the drawbacks of high greenhouse gas emission, reaching up to 2.16 kg CO2/kg NH3 and large energy consumption over 30 GJ/ton NH3 resulting from the production of the reactants and the high pressure-high temperature synthesis of ammonia. In order to…

Electrochemical Synthesis of Ammonia from Steam and Nitrogen Using an Oxygen-ion Conducting Electrolyte Jong Hoon Joo, Hyung Chul Yoon, Hana Jeoung, Ji Haeng Yu, Jong-Nam Kim, Youngmin Woo, Jin Young Jang, Korean Institute of Energy Research

Demonstration of an Ammonia-Gasoline Dual Fuel System in a Spark Ignition Internal Combustion Engine Youngmin Woo, Jin Young Jang, Youngiae Lee, Jong Hoon Joo, Ji Haeng Yu, Hyung Chul Yoon, and Jong-Nam Kim, Korean Institute of Energy Research