Welcome to the Ammonia Wrap: a summary of all the latest announcements, news items and publications about ammonia energy. This week: Ørsted unveils its P2X vision for the North Sea, energy trader Gunvor commits $500 million to sustainability, emissions reductions, finance world backs green hydrogen, Hydrofuel and Ontario Tech join forces and a new blue hydrogen/ammonia collaboration.

How simple can a fuel cell be? How about if it’s a direct ammonia fuel cell? This question came to mind during perusal of a paper that appeared in the June 2019 edition of the journal Chemical Engineering Science. The paper, “Development and performance evaluation of a direct ammonia fuel cell stack,” was written by Osamah Siddiqui and Ibrahim Dincer, both active within the Clean Energy Research Laboratory at Ontario Tech University in Canada. Their design may or may not ever reach the point of commercialization, but there is no denying its essential simplicity.

The project proposes a comprehensive investigation on the analysis, assessment and optimization of ammonia synthesis processes under renewable energy portfolio, including low-cost hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, ocean, biomass, etc. Furthermore, ammonia production via hydrocarbon decomposition, which will be investigated in the study, is a promising option to utilize fossil fuels in a cleaner and environmentally benign way. Case studies for various locations and applications in communities, cities and provinces to develop and implement clean solutions are performed. The objectives of this project include energy and exergy analyses, environmental impact assessments, thermo-economic analyses and evaluations, optimization studies, experimental investigation, scalability and…

Ammonia as a Remarkable Working Fluid and Fuel for Energy Systems Calin Zamfirescu and Ibrahim Dincer, University of Ontario Institute of Technology