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Transforming agriculture with carbon-neutral ammonia production
CategoriesSustainable News

Transforming agriculture with carbon-neutral ammonia production

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: Today, producing ammonia accounts for around 1.3 per cent of CO2 emissions from the world’s energy system, because the catalytic process requires extremely high temperatures and pressures that are normally achieved using fossil fuels. The vast majority of ammonia is used to create nitrogen fertilisers, making it a vitally important compound in global food production. Hoping to make it easier for farmers to produce ammonia cleanly is Danish startup NitroVolt.

The company has created a patent-pending “Nitrolyzer” that allows a previously carbon-producing process to become entirely carbon neutral and fossil free, with the only necessary inputs being green energy, water, and air. Within the Nitrolyzer, lithium salt is reduced to lithium metal, which then reacts with nitrogen to form nitrides. Hydrogen (which is produced by hydrolysis) can then react with nitrides to form ammonia. To make the process even more sustainable, the lithium can be reused again and again in the continuous reaction process.

Crucially, the Nitrolyzer was created to tackle the logistical challenges that farmers may face in accessing ammonia. The technology is modular and can therefore be installed wherever ammonia is needed, say on a farm or in a greenhouse. This means that farmers and growers can tailor production depending on their needs, and eliminate the costs and emissions associated with transporting fertiliser.

Recently, NitroVolt raised €750,000 in a pre-seed funding, which will be used to expand the team and help to scale the technology.

Fertilisers play an essential role in growing healthy crops and boosting food security, but currently industrial production methods are highly unsustainable. Luckily innovators are searching for alternatives, including the use of dog waste and seed coatings that reduce the need for fertilisers in the first place.

Written By: Archie Cox

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Fuelling the hydrogen revolution with green ammonia
CategoriesSustainable News

Fuelling the hydrogen revolution with green ammonia

By Zarkon Group,

Hydrogen is the most abundant element on Earth and has been identified as an important clean fuel for the energy transition, emitting only water when burned instead of carbon dioxide. However, producing hydrogen can be carbon intensive, and storing and transporting it is a challenge due to the extremely low temperatures and high pressure needed to keep it stable.   

For it to be a feasible alternative to fossil fuels, new methods for storage and transportation are required. Enter Nium, a spinout company from Cambridge University in the UK, which is pioneering a ground-breaking process for getting hydrogen from A to B using ‘green’ ammonia.

Turning hydrogen into ammonia – which is made up of hydrogen and nitrogen from the air – makes it much easier to move around. Nium uses nano catalysis, powered by renewable energy, which achieves this conversion at significantly reduced temperatures and pressures compared to the Haber-Bosch process – the way that ammonia has been produced for nearly 100 years. When the ammonia reaches its destination, the decentralised nature of Nium’s system means it is easy to turn it back into hydrogen using the same green process.

Green hydrogen provides a way to decarbonise hard-to-abate sectors such as transportation by truck or train, or heavy industry. Green ammonia, meanwhile, replaces ammonia produced through the traditional polluting process, which emits around 500mt of CO2 annually. And, in addition to being a means of transporting hydrogen, ammonia itself can be used in new applications such as shipping fuel, and it remains a key ingredient in fertilizers, which around 50 per cent of the world’s food production relies upon.

Nium’s new process is turning ammonia into a tool for the future, while cleaning up its use in the present.   

Video and article credit: RE:TV

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A pilot plant for green ammonia production
CategoriesSustainable News

A pilot plant for green ammonia production

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: A century ago, a growing population pushed farmers to grow crops faster than nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil could keep up, and supplies of natural nitrates began to run out. In response, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch developed a process to react hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen under pressure to make ammonia for use as fertiliser. But in solving one problem, they caused another one – making ammonia in this way takes a lot of energy. Now, a new process for making green ammonia may once again come to the rescue.

Dutch company Proton Ventures, the Institute Research Energy Solar et Energy Nouvelles (IRESEN), and Morocco’s Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) have signed an agreement to build a demonstration-sized green ammonia facility at the OCP Group chemical complex in Jorf Lasfar, Morocco. The plant will be capable of producing 4 tonnes of ammonia per day, powered using an electrical load emulator that simulates the profiles of wind and solar generation at different geographical sites.

The partners say the facility will act as a ‘world reference unit’ and the trial results will be used to develop large-scale industrial projects that use renewable energy to generate ammonia. The partner organisations hope that the project will allow them to develop expertise, conduct training, and acquire data covering a range of scenarios and operation and maintenance configurations. The hope is that this will enable future green molecule production plants.

Mohammed Bousseta, Director of Innovate for Industry at UM6P explains that the plant will “constitute a living laboratory available to UM6P Researchers, Doctoral Students and Professors for research and education in the fields of hydrogen and green ammonia [as well as] a pilot for training and feasibility studies for a large industrial unit of Green Ammonia.”

The promise of ammonia as a future green fuel can be seen in the variety of recent innovations covered by Springwise. These include a generator that runs on both hydrogen and ammonia fuel and a zero-emission ammonia fuel used to power heavy machinery.

Written By: Lisa Magloff

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Zero-emission, high-performance ammonia fuel powers heavy machinery
CategoriesSustainable News

Zero-emission, high-performance ammonia fuel powers heavy machinery

By Zarkon Group,

Spotted: With just a handful of countries dominating agricultural machinery sales use, replacing polluting diesel engines with a zero emissions alternative could be done relatively quickly. The result would make a significant dent in global greenhouse gases. New York-based Amogy has created a fuel and power system to do just that by using the world’s second most-produced chemical – ammonia. Use of the clean, high-power fuel system is part of Amogy’s plans to reduce around five gigatonnes of air pollution from transport by 2040.

Focused on the heavy machinery industries of shipping, truck transport, and agriculture, Amogy’s clean fuel provides the power and longevity needed by heavy-duty vehicles. And now, a retrofitted John Deere tractor has successfully showcased the new fuel.

Made by combining hydrogen with atmospheric nitrogen, ammonia is usually used as the basis of nitrogen fertilisers. Readily available as a material and easy to produce, it is a fuel source that can be integrated into current heavy industry structures such as storage, pipelines, and terminals. And with its high energy density, new vehicles using the fuel can be built smaller and lighter, and retrofitted machines won’t become restrictively heavy.

Ammonia has been more frequently spotted by Springwise as something to be removed. For example, Springwise has spotted a probiotic soap that removes ammonia from river water, as well as a portable industrial air quality monitor that detects pollutants, including ammonia. Amogy is instead seeing it as a more sustainable alternative to fossil fuels in transport. 

Written by: Keely Khoury

14th June 2022

Website: amogy.co

Contact: amogy.co/contact

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