The world’s first commercially produced “clean” ammonia will be shipped from Saudi Arabia to South Korea by the end of this year, according to the buyer, Lotte Fine Chemical.
A contract to deliver 25,000 tonnes of blue ammonia — derived from natural gas with most of the carbon captured and then utilised — was signed last week between Korean firm Lotte, Saudi Aramco subsidiary Sabic, and Saudi state-owned fertiliser producer Ma’aden.
Lotte says it hopes to import by the end of 2022 a total of 50,000 tonnes of the chemical, which Hydrogen Insight understands will be produced using hydrogen made at Aramco’s Jubail oil refinery, using steam methane reformation (SMR) technology.
The shipments will be certified by TÜV Rheinland, in another world first.
However, there are question marks over how “clean” both the ammonia and the shipments will be.
In 2020, Saudi Aramco and Sabic exported 40 tonnes of blue ammonia to Japan as part of a pilot project backed by the Japanese government, which resulted in 50 tonnes of CO2 being captured in the SMR process — 30 tonnes of which was used to produce methanol, with the remaining 20 tonnes used for enhanced oil recovery.
Taking into account the hydrogen content of ammonia, and the average nine tonnes of CO2 released for every tonne of unabated grey H2 produced via SMR, this implies a carbon capture rate of 78.5%, according to Hydrogen Insight calculations.
Extrapolating this rate to the new project, and the blue hydrogen required to produce 50,000 tonnes of ammonia would release about 17,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere — before the captured carbon dioxide is used for enhanced oil recovery, methanol production or anything else.
Further greenhouse gas emissions are likely to be produced by the natural gas used to power the Haber-Bosch process, which combines H2 with nitrogen from the air, and from the roughly 5,000km shipments to the Korean port of Ulsan, where Lotte already has an ammonia terminal.
“This contract marks a new turning point in building a global clean hydrogen/ammonia supply chain for carbon neutrality,” said Lotte Fine Chemical.
“There have been MOU [memorandum of understanding] agreements for the promotion and supply of clean hydrogen/ammonia production projects in countries around the world, but this is the first case of a commercial production of clean ammonia [as part of a] supply contract.”
Abdulrahman Shamsaddin, Sabic’s business head of agri-nutrients, said: “This contract is an important milestone on our carbon-neutral journey. By supplying the world's first clean ammonia, we are proud to help pave the way for future low-carbon hydrogen supply for a variety of applications.”
A press release by Lotte Fine Chemical explains that as early as 2025, ammonia is expected to be co-fired with coal to reduce emissions at coal-fired power plants — a “solution” that has widely been derided as greenwashing.
The statement also points out that “if the technology to convert ammonia into hydrogen is commercialised, it can be used as a clean hydrogen carrier and as a raw material for clean hydrogen”.
Several commentators have suggested that H2 extracted from imported ammonia would be very expensive, given the high amounts of energy required to both create NH3 and then split it back into H2 and nitrogen, as well as high shipping costs.
Lotte Group plans to produce 1.2 million tonnes of clean hydrogen by 2030 for both its own utilisation and wider distribution.
