Ohmium will deliver electrolysers to Tarafert to integrate into their new build ammonia & urea plant in Durango, northern Mexico. The ammonia plant is CCS-based, but an electrolyser facility & 1 GW solar farm will be built next door to give plant operators two different sources of low-carbon hydrogen feedstock: one CCS-based, and the other solar-based.
Wärtsilä has just launched its medium-speed, 4-stroke, Wärtsilä 25 engine, intended to be the first Wärtsilä engine to run on ammonia fuel. From 2023 a technology upgrade will be commercially available to allow the engine to run on alternative fuels like ammonia, with a fully-compliant NOx abatement system already available when running on fossil-based fuels. At the recent Australia conference, MAN ES reported that their two-stroke ammonia engine will be commercially available in 2024, with testing to commence next year.
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.
Yara and Northern Lights have signed the world’s first commercial agreement for cross border CO2 transport and storage. Emissions from the Sluiskil production plant in the Netherlands will be captured, processed and transported for sequestration at the Northern Lights storage site off the coast of Norway. Yara is pursuing multiple decarbonisation options for the Sluiskil plant, including this CCS announcement, waste hydrogen, and offshore wind-to-hydrogen as part of Ørsted’s larger SeaH2Land project.
The number of renewable hydrogen-based projects planned for the Suez Canal Economic Zone has now reached fifteen. Of the seven new MoUs signed in late August, four are targeting renewable ammonia production. Saudi-based alfanar, African energy developer Globeleq, Mediterranean Energy Partners and renewable energy developer Actis are all planning renewable ammonia production plants, with ACME Group also signing an MoU for a multi-million tonne renewable hydrogen plant in the SCZONE.
In Indian developments this week:
Last month, four significant production projects were announced in Canada’s maritime provinces:
German energy giants E.ON and Uniper have signed agreements to offtake 500,000 tonnes of renewable ammonia each from EverWind Fuel’s under-development project at Point Tupper, Nova Scotia, beginning from 2025. The backdrop for these offtake MoUs was the signing of a new bilateral agreement between the Canadian and German governments to establish a Transatlantic Canada-Germany supply corridor for hydrogen.
Air Products and Associated British Ports will develop a facility at the Port of Immingham for ammonia imports and hydrogen production (ie. cracking). Immingham is one of the UK’s largest ports and sits within Humberside: the UK’s largest industrial cluster. This follows on from a July announcement, which will see Air Products team up with Gunvor to develop an import terminal in Rotterdam, bringing ammonia from Air Products production projects around the world into Europe from 2026.
In maritime ammonia updates this week: