Jose Ramon Calvo of Nippon Gases Europe, Stephen B. Harrison of sbh4 consulting, and Joel H. Moser, CEO of First Ammonia, all have first hand experience of the opportunities and challenges facing the industry when it comes to developing sustainable, circular economies.
When it comes to hydrogen, there is no escaping the industry-wide hype. But Calvo sounded a note of caution.
”When we are analysing replacement of fossil fuels by green or low-carbon hydrogen, we have to take into consideration the volume that you need to compensate. We are not always using hydrogen as a fuel replacement. All the industries are testing how hydrogen can perform. From a cost and production point of view, today, it is impossible; that’s why some industries, like steel, are trying to replace BF (blast furnace) with DRI (direct reduced iron). It’s a case by case basis. My opinion is that hydrogen can be used, but in some cases it’s not the best option.”
Once the medination technology scales up to a certain level, he believes hydrogen, together with CO2, will produce additional value.
”We are working with partners with ammonia in markets such as Japan, where it’s very well recognised as an invector. In Europe it’s much more difficult as there are restrictions. The chemical use of hydrogen is much better than gas.”
Unsurprisingly, Moser is committed to ammonia and describes hydrogen as ”a building block” to ammonia.
”Hydrogen is a very complicated molecule – it escapes very easily, it brittles metal pipelines – so we believe the role that hydrogen ultimately plays in the production of other power effects, is primarily ammonia. Now there’s a lot of different ways to source renewable power; sometimes it’s quite intermittent, directly connected to a source.”
First Ammonia’s business model, initially, is to connect with the grid, and to draw green power intemittently at times of the day that it’s not in demand.
”So we’re not competing with other use. We’re buying the green power, and essentially stabilising the grid. It’s coming in at quite a consistent level – there are a variety of electrolyser types, the SOECs that we’re sourcing provide intermittent levels of power. So the systems we’re building will accommodate a wide variety of use cases for sourcing renewable power.”
Harrison said we shouldn’t overlook the role of obvious solutions, such as water.
Harnessing the power of water
“When we split H20, there’s oxygen gas, and typically it’s going to come off with some hydrogen in it – maybe around 2%. For some people that’s great, whereas others will say ‘No, I need pure oxygen’. When you look at an industry like steel, there is oxygen there – and it’s kind of free. We need to think about the gases coming off the electrolyser.
”How do we put oxygen into the international space station? Do we deliver compressed oxygen, in a rocket, or liquid oxygen? No, we deliver water, and then electrolyse it to make oxygen and hydrogen. The mass of that water – 18, 16 of which is oxygen. So if we bring up 1kg of water, we’re almost bringing up 1kg of oxygen. It would be the most efficient way of transporting oxygen to the astronauts.”
While electrolysers do consume water, it is often of an incredibly high purity.
”If it’s a small electrolyser producing a little bit of hydrogen, for a refuelling station, using mains tap water in most locations will be no problem. We need to purify it, but it’s not going to drain the system,” said Harrison.
”On the other hand, if you think about the places in the world which are most advantaged for wind and solar – then it’s the deserts in Australia and Egypt. For water, there’s the River Nile through Egypt, but the people need that for their own use, for irrigation. So we have to look for alternative solutions, and that means desalination from the Red Sea, which would be perfect.
”We pull the water out, desalinate it naturally – and yes it’s more equipment and more energy, but when you look at the overall picture, it’s a little bit more – it’s really not going to blow the process economics out of the equation, and desalination technology is well understood. Water usage for electrolysers is a critical question, but there are solutions, which are relatively low tech, that we can implement.”
Companies such as Nippon, which published a Sustainability Report last year, are acutely aware of their decarbonisation responsibilities.
“One of our main applications is waste water treatment, and how we can recover waste water by using oxygen. We are trying to reduce waste in our whole operation,” said Calvo.
He added that desalination does incur high concentrations of salt, and hydrogen also poses challenges. “We need to minimise the amount of water – it’s very easy to say but difficult to find the right solution.”
Moser said the first point of the process is bringing renewable power to hydrogen, and that’s why he likes SOECs, as they’re the most highly efficient electrolysers.
”They have the capacity to convert as much of 90% of the electrical energy into hydrogen energy. In the case of making ammonia, there’s a further advantage as the synthesis is an exo-thermic reaction, it generates heat. So we’re able to capture waste heat and put it back into the electrolyser process. It’s theoretically possible that we might be able to achieve 100% conversion of the electrical energy.
”It does require energy. You are converting ultimately the electrical energy into usable ammonia at some cost, in the same way that you crack crude into products, you’re using energy to do it but that efficiency creates something that’s usable.
“I think of it in terms of the ultimate effect on cost, compared with comparable or displaced sources, and at price points that are competitive. There is an efficiency to the process and we’re designing plants around the world which will drive down development and construction costs, and that’s the trend of this industry.”
Hydrogen transport
When it comes to transport, Harrison said LNG is perfect but we want to decarbonise, so there’s more focuse on e-methanol, ammonia, and hydrogen carriers. ”LNG is about four times better than liquid hydrogen so we’ve got a long way to go before we’re anywhere close to LNG,” he said.
When it comes to transporting hydrogen, he added that the best course of action may be not to ship it in the first place. ”Let’s move the electrons on the grid to the electrolysers, and make the hydrogen where it’s needed. Then we don’t have to transport or store it, and consume it at the point of use.
”As for waste-to-hydrogen, where do we have all of our cars? In cities, where we have our cars and trucks, and it’s where we produce waste too. So waste-to-hydrogen is a distributed, decentralised form of producing hydrogen, which precisely matches our demands. High-potential wind and solar, as we’ve said, will need to be transported a long way, from where no one lives.”
Moser said we’ve been using ammonia for 100 years, and there is an established infrastructure, from storage to ships.
”We know how to handle it safely, and it’s easy to produce hydrogen into ammonia. I agree we should be producing at source, but at some places, that’s not possible. In future, the energy-exporting countries will be different to the ones we are used today – such as Chile.
”I believe the world will eventually take the next step, as Japan has, and see ammonia as a fuel. It’s much more energy dense than hydrogen, and we don’t need to undertake additional expense and processing it. We believe that hydrogen will move around the world as ammonia, and ultimately be used as ammonia. But there needs to be wider public acceptance, and regulatory procedures put in place at ports.”
Harrison concluded that circularity, sustainability and decarbonisation are all absolutely critical. ”Of all the gasworld TV webinars this year, this has to be the most important,” he said.