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OCI Global

Article

Certified renewable, bio ammonia incorporated into new supply chains

ISCC PLUS-certified renewable ammonia from Fertiglobe will be used in a low-carbon laundry powder demonstration project by Unilever in India. In Germany, bio-ammonia produced by OCI Global (also ISCC PLUS-certified) will be used to produce methylmethacrylate, a key feedstock in PLEXIGLAS® production. The two announcements join a number of supply chains which have now incorporated low-carbon and renewable ammonia.

Article

IEA: ammonia key to decarbonising shipping by 2050

With international shipping activity to more than double by 2050, the IEA forecasts that ammonia’s share of final energy consumption in the industry will rise to 44% in 2050, with a suite of other low-carbon fuels to play smaller roles. Lloyd’s Register & OCI HyFuels have also forecast that ammonia (and particularly electrolytic ammonia) will become the most significant fuel in the maritime sector by 2050.

Article

OCI Global: renewable ammonia in Texas

OCI will offtake electrolytic hydrogen feedstock from New Fortress Energy’s ZeroParks facility from 2025, allowing for the production of 80,000 tonnes per year of renewable ammonia at its Beaumont plant in Texas. This “over-the-fence” feedstock approach will also be employed in the development of a new multi-million tonne per year, greenfield ammonia plant in Beaumont, with Linde to own & operate an adjacent, CCS-based hydrogen production plant.

Article

Preparing the Netherlands for large-scale ammonia imports

As Europe is expected to import a significant part of its hydrogen needs, ammonia cracking will play a key role. New results from a pre-feasibility study shed light on important considerations for efficient, safe deployment of industrial scale cracking at Rotterdam. Modernisation of the Netherland’s official ammonia storage and loading guideline also shows that fit-for-purpose regulation will be important to meet the demands of a fast-growing ammonia industry.

Article

Lotte Chemical: high ambitions for the South Korean ammonia market

OCI Global will supply clean ammonia to Korea from this year as part of a new agreement with Lotte Fine Chemical. The pair will also develop a global ammonia bunkering network by leveraging their existing infrastructure. Meanwhile, CF Industries and Lotte Chemical will explore new opportunities for clean ammonia production on the US Gulf Coast, as well as long-term off take to South Korea.

Article

More ammonia energy giants head for the Gulf Coast

RWE, LOTTE, Mitsubishi will join forces to jointly develop a large-scale clean ammonia production & export project in the Port of Corpus Christi, Texas. At full size, the facility will produce 10 million tonnes per year of “green” and “blue” ammonia combined, to be exported to Europe and Asia. Also on the Gulf Coast, Linde will build, own and operate a CCS hydrogen & nitrogen production plant to supply gas feedstock to OCI’s world-scale ammonia facility in Beaumont, Texas.

Article

More mega-scale production in Texas

This week we explore three mega-scale production projects planned for Texas. On the Gulf Coast, Avina Clean Hydrogen is developing a 100% renewable-powered ammonia plant. In northern Texas, Air Products and AES are planning a 1.4 GW wind & solar-powered hydrogen production facility targeting the heavy trucking market, and in Beaumont OCI has just broken ground on its new million-tonne-per-year CCS ammonia plant.

Article

Renewable ammonia opportunities in Egypt

For our December episode of Ammonia Project Features, we welcomed Alzbeta Klein (International Fertilizer Association) and Tarek Hosny (Fertiglobe). Our speakers discussed a pathway forward for Egypt’s fertilizer industry to decarbonize, presented the newly-commissioned Egypt Green Hydrogen project, and outlined the unique advantages (and challenges) of developing renewable production projects in Egypt.

Article

COP27: Egyptian production projects

This week we explore three ammonia production announcements from Egypt at COP27. The “Egypt Green” integrated hydrogen plant has been commissioned in Ain Sokhna, and will shortly begin supplying renewable hydrogen to two nearby ammonia plants. AMEA Power has agreed to develop an 800,000 tonnes per year ammonia production project (also in Ain Sokhna), and Fortescue Future Industries will explore the feasibility of multiple renewable projects across the country.

Article

More CCS projects announced for the US Gulf Coast

New US CCS ammonia announcements include: a new million-tonne-per-year facility for OCI in Texas, a new $2 billion production facility for CF Industries and Mitsui & Co. in Louisiana, multi-million-tonnes-per-year of production output for JERA, ConocoPhillips and Uniper on the Gulf Coast spread over multiple export projects, and FID reached for OCI’s decarbonisation project in Iowa.

Article

Air Products and Gunvor to develop new import terminal in Rotterdam

Air Products and Gunvor will jointly develop a renewable ammonia import terminal at Gunvor Petroleum’s existing refinery & distribution facilities in Rotterdam Europoort. The partners expect to be providing hydrogen to the Netherlands in 2026, with the new terminal receiving imports of renewable ammonia from Air Products production projects around the world. The new project is now the third ammonia import terminal under development at the Port of Rotterdam, and comes the same week as Dutch gas network operator Gasunie announced that it had started construction of a national hydrogen distribution network in the Netherlands.

Article

OCI to expand ammonia import capabilities at Rotterdam

OCI will expand its ammonia import terminal at the Port of Rotterdam, increasing throughput capacity from 400,000 tonnes per year to 1.2 million tonnes per year by 2023. A second phase of expansion is planned, and will involve construction of a new, “world-scale” ammonia storage tank to bring throughput capacities above 3 million tonnes per year.

Article

Green ammonia for polymers: “Econitrile”

OCI, AnQore and Elix Polymers announced this week that green ammonia would form the basis of a low-carbon, sustainable value chain for polymer manufacturing in Europe. Green ammonia supplied by OCI would be used for the manufacture of green Acrylonitrile (named “Econitrile”), a feedstock for one for one of the world’s most common thermoplastics used in injection molding. Potential end applications for the value chain range from engineering materials to children’s toys.

Article

OCI and NortH2 partner to develop green ammonia & methanol supply chains in the Netherlands

The NortH2 consortium announced this week that it would partner with OCI for a large-scale supply agreement to OCI’s manufacturing plants in the Netherlands, enabling OCI to develop the first integrated green ammonia and methanol value chains in Europe.

Article

Next Level Solid Oxide Electrolysis

A high-powered consortium of academic & industry partners - VoltaChem, TNO, ISPT, Air Liquide, BP, and OCI - will explore the upscaling potential of solid oxide electrolysis (SOEC) to an industrial scale. One of the industrial applications to be investigated is the use of SOEC technology for hydrogen production at an ammonia plant. The study aims to present a viable roadmap forward for an SOEC demonstration integrated into an existing petrochemical facility.

Article

Decarbonising fertiliser production in Iowa via CCS

Navigator will provide carbon transport and storage services to decarbonise OCI's Iowa Fertilizer Company plant via the newly-announced Heartland Greenway CCS system. In the first phase, 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide will be captured from process gas at the plant beginning in 2024. This equates to production of 300,000 tonnes of blue ammonia.

Article

Itochu to buy and produce blue ammonia

Itochu will purchase blue ammonia from Abu Dhabi, under a new agreement with OCI NV and ADNOC. Itochu will also team up with Petronas Canada (subsidiary of the Malaysian state energy company) will team up for a feasibility study into a 1 million tonne per year blue ammonia production plant in Alberta.

Article

The Emerging Ammonia-Methanol Dialectic

Based on recent press reports, ammonia has a new friend: methanol. With the two upstart fuels being mentioned together with increasing frequency, they seem poised to develop on parallel paths as each seeks market applications where it can become a mainstay solution.

Article

The Ammonia Wrap: OCI to charter ammonia-fueled vessels, Japanese CCGT units await ammonia, more green ammonia for Chile, new South Korea and Uruguay updates

Welcome to the Ammonia Wrap: a summary of all the latest announcements, news items and publications about ammonia energy. This week: OCI to charter ammonia-fueled vessels, new carbon-free maritime fuels forecast, Hokkaido Electric postpones CCGT deployment, awaits ammonia, more green ammonia for Chile, Net-zero Teesside to include CF Industries ammonia production, South Korea and Uruguay.

Article

Power-to-Ammonia: the Economic Viability of Ammonia Energy

In the last 12 months ... The extensive Power-to-Ammonia feasibility study demonstrated that ammonia energy could be economically viable in different business cases. The report was a collaborative effort by large European corporations - power companies, electricity distributors, chemical producers, engineering firms - and it has already resulted in plans for one 440 MW power plant to be converted to carbon-free fuel by 2023.

Article

Report from the European Conference: Renewable Ammonia cost-competitive with Natural Gas Ammonia

The viability of producing ammonia using renewable energy was one of the recurring themes of the recent Power to Ammonia conference in Rotterdam. Specifically, what cost reductions or market mechanisms would be necessary so that renewable ammonia - produced using electrolytic hydrogen in a Haber-Bosch plant - would be competitive with normal, "brown" ammonia, made from fossil fuels. A number of major industry participants addressed this theme at the conference, including Yara and OCI Nitrogen, but it was the closing speech, from the International Energy Agency (IEA), that provided the key data to demonstrate that, because costs have already come down so far, renewable ammonia is cost-competitive in certain regions today.

Article

Power to Ammonia: alternative synthesis technologies

The Institute for Sustainable Process Technology (ISPT) recently published a detailed analysis of three business cases for producing renewable ammonia from electricity: Power to Ammonia. The feasibility study concludes that, in the near term, ammonia production using clean electricity will likely rely on a combination of two old-established, proven technologies: electrolysis and Haber-Bosch (E-HB). To reach this conclusion, however, the study also assessed a range of alternative technologies, which I summarize in this article.

Article

Power to Ammonia: The OCI Nitrogen – Geleen case

The Power-to-Ammonia feasibility study includes an assessment of the costs and benefits of producing ammonia from renewable energy at OCI Nitrogen's existing production site in Geleen. Of all the companies who joined forces in the Power-to-Ammonia project, OCI is the only ammonia producer. Its business case for making carbon-free ammonia is especially interesting therefore: not just because of the company's deep understanding of the ammonia market and available technologies, but also because it faces corporate exposure to the financial, operational, and social risks of relying upon a fossil-fueled technology in a carbon constrained future.

Article

Power to Ammonia feasibility study

The Institute for Sustainable Process Technology has just published a feasibility study that represents a major step toward commercializing renewable ammonia. It examines the "value chains and business cases to produce CO2-free ammonia," analysing the potential for commercial deployment at three companies with existing sites in The Netherlands: Nuon at Eemshaven, Stedin at Goeree-Overflakkee, and OCI Nitrogen at Geleen. The project is called Power to Ammonia.

Article

Nuon’s Power-to-Ammonia update, and the first European ammonia fuel conference in 2017

An article in the latest issue of Dutch-language magazine NPT Proces Technologie provides a detailed update on the Nuon project, about which we wrote a few months ago. Nuon's Power-to-Ammonia project looks at grid-scale storage of "seasonal surplus" electricity from wind and solar in the form of ammonia. Proton Ventures, the originators of the Power-to-Ammonia concept in The Netherlands, have also been sharing details of the project in recent conference presentations - and announced that they will be hosting the first European ammonia fuel conference, in Rotterdam, in May 2017.

Article

Nuon – Power to Ammonia

In March 2016 the Dutch utility Nuon announced that it will study the possibility of storing "seasonal surplus" electricity from wind and solar in the form of ammonia. The study by Nuon and Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) is part of the project "Power to Ammonia." The study will be conducted at Nuon's Magnum power station.

Article

Certified renewable, bio ammonia incorporated into new supply chains

ISCC PLUS-certified renewable ammonia from Fertiglobe will be used in a low-carbon laundry powder demonstration project by Unilever in India. In Germany, bio-ammonia produced by OCI Global (also ISCC PLUS-certified) will be used to produce methylmethacrylate, a key feedstock in PLEXIGLAS® production. The two announcements join a number of supply chains which have now incorporated low-carbon and renewable ammonia.

Article

IEA: ammonia key to decarbonising shipping by 2050

With international shipping activity to more than double by 2050, the IEA forecasts that ammonia’s share of final energy consumption in the industry will rise to 44% in 2050, with a suite of other low-carbon fuels to play smaller roles. Lloyd’s Register & OCI HyFuels have also forecast that ammonia (and particularly electrolytic ammonia) will become the most significant fuel in the maritime sector by 2050.

Article

OCI Global: renewable ammonia in Texas

OCI will offtake electrolytic hydrogen feedstock from New Fortress Energy’s ZeroParks facility from 2025, allowing for the production of 80,000 tonnes per year of renewable ammonia at its Beaumont plant in Texas. This “over-the-fence” feedstock approach will also be employed in the development of a new multi-million tonne per year, greenfield ammonia plant in Beaumont, with Linde to own & operate an adjacent, CCS-based hydrogen production plant.

Article

Preparing the Netherlands for large-scale ammonia imports

As Europe is expected to import a significant part of its hydrogen needs, ammonia cracking will play a key role. New results from a pre-feasibility study shed light on important considerations for efficient, safe deployment of industrial scale cracking at Rotterdam. Modernisation of the Netherland’s official ammonia storage and loading guideline also shows that fit-for-purpose regulation will be important to meet the demands of a fast-growing ammonia industry.

Article

Lotte Chemical: high ambitions for the South Korean ammonia market

OCI Global will supply clean ammonia to Korea from this year as part of a new agreement with Lotte Fine Chemical. The pair will also develop a global ammonia bunkering network by leveraging their existing infrastructure. Meanwhile, CF Industries and Lotte Chemical will explore new opportunities for clean ammonia production on the US Gulf Coast, as well as long-term off take to South Korea.

Article

More ammonia energy giants head for the Gulf Coast

RWE, LOTTE, Mitsubishi will join forces to jointly develop a large-scale clean ammonia production & export project in the Port of Corpus Christi, Texas. At full size, the facility will produce 10 million tonnes per year of “green” and “blue” ammonia combined, to be exported to Europe and Asia. Also on the Gulf Coast, Linde will build, own and operate a CCS hydrogen & nitrogen production plant to supply gas feedstock to OCI’s world-scale ammonia facility in Beaumont, Texas.

Article

More mega-scale production in Texas

This week we explore three mega-scale production projects planned for Texas. On the Gulf Coast, Avina Clean Hydrogen is developing a 100% renewable-powered ammonia plant. In northern Texas, Air Products and AES are planning a 1.4 GW wind & solar-powered hydrogen production facility targeting the heavy trucking market, and in Beaumont OCI has just broken ground on its new million-tonne-per-year CCS ammonia plant.

Article

Renewable ammonia opportunities in Egypt

For our December episode of Ammonia Project Features, we welcomed Alzbeta Klein (International Fertilizer Association) and Tarek Hosny (Fertiglobe). Our speakers discussed a pathway forward for Egypt’s fertilizer industry to decarbonize, presented the newly-commissioned Egypt Green Hydrogen project, and outlined the unique advantages (and challenges) of developing renewable production projects in Egypt.

Article

COP27: Egyptian production projects

This week we explore three ammonia production announcements from Egypt at COP27. The “Egypt Green” integrated hydrogen plant has been commissioned in Ain Sokhna, and will shortly begin supplying renewable hydrogen to two nearby ammonia plants. AMEA Power has agreed to develop an 800,000 tonnes per year ammonia production project (also in Ain Sokhna), and Fortescue Future Industries will explore the feasibility of multiple renewable projects across the country.

Article

More CCS projects announced for the US Gulf Coast

New US CCS ammonia announcements include: a new million-tonne-per-year facility for OCI in Texas, a new $2 billion production facility for CF Industries and Mitsui & Co. in Louisiana, multi-million-tonnes-per-year of production output for JERA, ConocoPhillips and Uniper on the Gulf Coast spread over multiple export projects, and FID reached for OCI’s decarbonisation project in Iowa.

Article

Air Products and Gunvor to develop new import terminal in Rotterdam

Air Products and Gunvor will jointly develop a renewable ammonia import terminal at Gunvor Petroleum’s existing refinery & distribution facilities in Rotterdam Europoort. The partners expect to be providing hydrogen to the Netherlands in 2026, with the new terminal receiving imports of renewable ammonia from Air Products production projects around the world. The new project is now the third ammonia import terminal under development at the Port of Rotterdam, and comes the same week as Dutch gas network operator Gasunie announced that it had started construction of a national hydrogen distribution network in the Netherlands.

Article

OCI to expand ammonia import capabilities at Rotterdam

OCI will expand its ammonia import terminal at the Port of Rotterdam, increasing throughput capacity from 400,000 tonnes per year to 1.2 million tonnes per year by 2023. A second phase of expansion is planned, and will involve construction of a new, “world-scale” ammonia storage tank to bring throughput capacities above 3 million tonnes per year.

Article

Green ammonia for polymers: “Econitrile”

OCI, AnQore and Elix Polymers announced this week that green ammonia would form the basis of a low-carbon, sustainable value chain for polymer manufacturing in Europe. Green ammonia supplied by OCI would be used for the manufacture of green Acrylonitrile (named “Econitrile”), a feedstock for one for one of the world’s most common thermoplastics used in injection molding. Potential end applications for the value chain range from engineering materials to children’s toys.

Article

OCI and NortH2 partner to develop green ammonia & methanol supply chains in the Netherlands

The NortH2 consortium announced this week that it would partner with OCI for a large-scale supply agreement to OCI’s manufacturing plants in the Netherlands, enabling OCI to develop the first integrated green ammonia and methanol value chains in Europe.

Article

Next Level Solid Oxide Electrolysis

A high-powered consortium of academic & industry partners - VoltaChem, TNO, ISPT, Air Liquide, BP, and OCI - will explore the upscaling potential of solid oxide electrolysis (SOEC) to an industrial scale. One of the industrial applications to be investigated is the use of SOEC technology for hydrogen production at an ammonia plant. The study aims to present a viable roadmap forward for an SOEC demonstration integrated into an existing petrochemical facility.

Article

Decarbonising fertiliser production in Iowa via CCS

Navigator will provide carbon transport and storage services to decarbonise OCI's Iowa Fertilizer Company plant via the newly-announced Heartland Greenway CCS system. In the first phase, 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide will be captured from process gas at the plant beginning in 2024. This equates to production of 300,000 tonnes of blue ammonia.

Article

Itochu to buy and produce blue ammonia

Itochu will purchase blue ammonia from Abu Dhabi, under a new agreement with OCI NV and ADNOC. Itochu will also team up with Petronas Canada (subsidiary of the Malaysian state energy company) will team up for a feasibility study into a 1 million tonne per year blue ammonia production plant in Alberta.

Article

The Emerging Ammonia-Methanol Dialectic

Based on recent press reports, ammonia has a new friend: methanol. With the two upstart fuels being mentioned together with increasing frequency, they seem poised to develop on parallel paths as each seeks market applications where it can become a mainstay solution.

Article

The Ammonia Wrap: OCI to charter ammonia-fueled vessels, Japanese CCGT units await ammonia, more green ammonia for Chile, new South Korea and Uruguay updates

Welcome to the Ammonia Wrap: a summary of all the latest announcements, news items and publications about ammonia energy. This week: OCI to charter ammonia-fueled vessels, new carbon-free maritime fuels forecast, Hokkaido Electric postpones CCGT deployment, awaits ammonia, more green ammonia for Chile, Net-zero Teesside to include CF Industries ammonia production, South Korea and Uruguay.

Article

Power-to-Ammonia: the Economic Viability of Ammonia Energy

In the last 12 months ... The extensive Power-to-Ammonia feasibility study demonstrated that ammonia energy could be economically viable in different business cases. The report was a collaborative effort by large European corporations - power companies, electricity distributors, chemical producers, engineering firms - and it has already resulted in plans for one 440 MW power plant to be converted to carbon-free fuel by 2023.

Article

Report from the European Conference: Renewable Ammonia cost-competitive with Natural Gas Ammonia

The viability of producing ammonia using renewable energy was one of the recurring themes of the recent Power to Ammonia conference in Rotterdam. Specifically, what cost reductions or market mechanisms would be necessary so that renewable ammonia - produced using electrolytic hydrogen in a Haber-Bosch plant - would be competitive with normal, "brown" ammonia, made from fossil fuels. A number of major industry participants addressed this theme at the conference, including Yara and OCI Nitrogen, but it was the closing speech, from the International Energy Agency (IEA), that provided the key data to demonstrate that, because costs have already come down so far, renewable ammonia is cost-competitive in certain regions today.

Article

Power to Ammonia: alternative synthesis technologies

The Institute for Sustainable Process Technology (ISPT) recently published a detailed analysis of three business cases for producing renewable ammonia from electricity: Power to Ammonia. The feasibility study concludes that, in the near term, ammonia production using clean electricity will likely rely on a combination of two old-established, proven technologies: electrolysis and Haber-Bosch (E-HB). To reach this conclusion, however, the study also assessed a range of alternative technologies, which I summarize in this article.

Article

Power to Ammonia: The OCI Nitrogen – Geleen case

The Power-to-Ammonia feasibility study includes an assessment of the costs and benefits of producing ammonia from renewable energy at OCI Nitrogen's existing production site in Geleen. Of all the companies who joined forces in the Power-to-Ammonia project, OCI is the only ammonia producer. Its business case for making carbon-free ammonia is especially interesting therefore: not just because of the company's deep understanding of the ammonia market and available technologies, but also because it faces corporate exposure to the financial, operational, and social risks of relying upon a fossil-fueled technology in a carbon constrained future.

Article

Power to Ammonia feasibility study

The Institute for Sustainable Process Technology has just published a feasibility study that represents a major step toward commercializing renewable ammonia. It examines the "value chains and business cases to produce CO2-free ammonia," analysing the potential for commercial deployment at three companies with existing sites in The Netherlands: Nuon at Eemshaven, Stedin at Goeree-Overflakkee, and OCI Nitrogen at Geleen. The project is called Power to Ammonia.

Article

Nuon’s Power-to-Ammonia update, and the first European ammonia fuel conference in 2017

An article in the latest issue of Dutch-language magazine NPT Proces Technologie provides a detailed update on the Nuon project, about which we wrote a few months ago. Nuon's Power-to-Ammonia project looks at grid-scale storage of "seasonal surplus" electricity from wind and solar in the form of ammonia. Proton Ventures, the originators of the Power-to-Ammonia concept in The Netherlands, have also been sharing details of the project in recent conference presentations - and announced that they will be hosting the first European ammonia fuel conference, in Rotterdam, in May 2017.

Article

Nuon – Power to Ammonia

In March 2016 the Dutch utility Nuon announced that it will study the possibility of storing "seasonal surplus" electricity from wind and solar in the form of ammonia. The study by Nuon and Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) is part of the project "Power to Ammonia." The study will be conducted at Nuon's Magnum power station.