Four "catalytic" projects will provide momentum for the new roadmap, driving the rollout of at least 15 GW of electrolysis capacity between them by 2040. Ammonia is a feature of all these kick-off projects, and the government sees ammonia's primary role in the transition as decarbonising energy-intensive industries in South Africa.
GenCell Energy has announced its ammonia-fed, off-grid power generation system will be widely available to commercial customers next year, with a select number of units to be deployed in 2022. The GenCell FOX™ is an updated version of the A5™ containerised system, and is designed for use in the telecom sector: especially for remote installations with no access to grid power and which need to operate in harsh weather conditions.
This week Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (via subsidiary Mitsubishi Shipbuilding) & Mitsui O.S.K. Lines completed a joint study on the use of floating storage and regasification units (FSRU) for ammonia bunkering. FSRUs open up a suite of new options for future bunkering setups - particularly power generation applications.
Sumitomo and Oshima Shipbuilding will jointly design & develop an 80,000 m3, ammonia-fueled dry bulk carrier, to hit the water by 2025. In a separate agreement, Sumitomo and Keppel O&M will work together to implement ammonia fuel bunkering in Singapore, with the aim to begin commercial operations in the mid-2020s. Development of a bunkering vessel and a full ammonia value chain (including offshore power generation) is central to the Keppell partnership.
This week we explore four updates in ammonia combustion R&D:
1. A team from the University of Cambridge has shown merchant vessels are the strongest candidates for conversion to run on ammonia powertrains, with cargo capacity losses of 4-9% able to be feasibly offset by operators.
2. Researchers at the University of Minnesota have successfully tested a thermochemical recuperation (TCR) reactor to improve the efficiency of a dual-fuel, diesel-ammonia compression ignition engine by minimising ammonia slip.
3. A global team led by Cardiff University researchers has revealed some of the inner workings of ammonia combustion in gas turbine flames.
4. A global team has produced a cradle-to-gate environmental assessment for ammonia production and ammonia-based electricity generation, suggesting that renewable and nuclear ammonia have a significant role to play in decarbonising the power sector.
South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) announced ammonia coal co-combustion will be operational in over half the country's coal-fired power generating units by 2030. The government has already set a target of 13.8 - 21.5% of national power generation coming from hydrogen & ammonia-fed gas turbines by 2050 (the 2050 Carbon Neutrality Roadmap was approved in October). To help drive the required commercialisation & technology deployment, MOTIE, KEPCO and other Korean power utilities will collaborate in a ‘Hydrogen and Ammonia Power Generation Demonstration Promotion Group’. In supply news, South Korean oil & gas major GS Energy announced this week is will join ADNOC and Japan-based Mitsui & Co. to develop the million tonne per year blue ammonia project in Al Ruwais, UAE.
The Role of Low-Carbon Fuels in the Clean Energy Transitions of the Power Sector forecasts a significant role for low-carbon hydrogen and ammonia in decarbonising the power sector, and highlights the promising results of co-firing trials to date (both coal power plants and gas turbines). The report also outlines some key next steps to enable the widespread use of these low-carbon fuels.