Electric Hydrogen, a U.S. manufacturer of advanced electrolyzer technology, has been selected to install its HYPRPlant design at Synergen Green Energy’s proposed Texas Green Ammonia Project.
The international shipping industry’s push to significantly reduce its carbon footprint over the next three decades is raising an obvious question: Is there a zero- or low-carbon bunker fuel that meets all of the industry’s basic criteria — things like availability, safety, and relative economy, not to mention sufficient on-board energy to transport massive, city-block-sized vessels thousands of miles at a clip. There is no clear answer yet, but there is a lot of talk about ammonia, or more specifically ammonia produced in a way that either generates no carbon dioxide (CO2) or that captures and sequesters much of the CO2 that is generated during production. But several major challenges must be met before “green” and “blue” ammonia can lay claim to even a small slice of the bunkers market, as we discuss in today’s RBN blog.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about “green” and “blue” hydrogen becoming increasingly important players in the world’s lower-carbon energy future. Green and blue ammonia too, given that ammonia, with its high hydrogen content, is an efficient “carrier” of hydrogen when it needs to be delivered by ship, railcar, or truck. Also, ammonia itself — like hydrogen — can be used to power fuel cells and ammonia-combustion technology is being developed to use fuel ammonia at power plants. But for these low- or zero-carbon energy products to be adopted at a global scale, new infrastructure will need to be built, not only to enable their production and consumption but to transport them to where they’ll be consumed. Enter the just-finished ammonia terminal that Royal Vopak and Moda Midstream jointly developed at a prime site along the Houston Ship Channel. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the greenfield facility and its prospective role as a major import/export hub for ammonia.
