Colorless Green Ammonia Sleeps Furiously: Awakening the dream of carbonless energy.

• Author: Rhode, Scott
• Position: OIL & GAS

Hydrocarbons are a two-edged sword. One edge is hydrogen, storing energy like wound-up springs that is released when combusted with oxygen. The other edge is the carbon atoms the hydrogen is bonded to, which in the grip of oxygen become a climate-warming veil of carbon dioxide gas. Petroleum under the North Slope and methane under Cook Inlet have both potentials: productive energy from hydrogen and destructive pollution from carbon. In a decarbonizing global market, Alaska needs a way to separate the good from the bad.

"If we want to continue to be an energy exporting state, which is very much what we see ourselves as, we need to understand those markets are changing internationally," says Gwen Holdmann, director of the Alaska Center for Energy and Power (ACEP) at UAF.

The fastest change is in maritime shipping. Last year, the Marine Environment Protection Committee of the International Maritime Organization adopted its MEPC 76 amendment, which requires large ships to be rated for carbon intensity, starting next year. The quickest path to reduced carbon intensity is burning fuel without carbon in it.

"Ammonia is probably the leading candidate for them," Holdmann says.

Nitrogen for Carbon

A molecule that swaps out carbon for a nitrogen atom, NH3 is mostly used as fertilizer--88 percent of worldwide consumption. Ammonia can also be a household cleaner or refrigerant, but it's also as combustible as diesel fuel, albeit with about one-third of the energy density. (Although NH3 and gaseous hydrogen involve different chemistry and technology, both are lumped together as carbonless energy carriers.)

The International Energy Agency forecasts up to 10 percent of global shipping will use ammonia fuel by 2040 to satisfy the MEPC 76 standard. Within fifty years, the projection is 70 percent.

On shore, South Korea and Japan set targets of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, followed by China's goal of net-zero in 2060. Japan's largest electric utility wants ammonia to replace coal in its power plants. That shift requires a new marketing approach for the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation (AGDC) as it tries to sell liquified natural gas (LNG) from the North Slope to Asian utilities.

"When we're talking to them, they ask about the LNG opportunity but also the hydrogen opportunity," says AGDC President Frank Richards.

Prior to 2013, South Korea did import ammonia from Alaska, made at the Kenai Nitrogen Facility in Nikiski. It was sprayed into dirt as plant food.

"Ammonia has always been sold for its nitrogen value; people pay for what it's worth as a fertilizer," says chemical engineer Nathan Prisco. "And then [Japan] realized, just a few years ago, 'If we burn it, we already hit our hydrogen target.' The hydrogen value of ammonia had been undervalued."

Anyone selling hydrocarbons needs a "credible energy transition story," says Nick Szymoniak, AGDC's manager of new business ventures. Alaska has that story, he says: "Alaska, by geologic dumb luck, has a great carbon sequestration basin in Cook Inlet. By a history of industrial dumb luck, we have an existing ammonia plant sitting idle. And based on geography dumb luck, we're located in close proximity to Asia."

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