Japan will use ammonia to generate electricity
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Japan to Use Ammonia for Power Generation Author/Source: Refining & Chemical Industry News Date: 2020-12-09 Clicks: 14 Japan will use ammonia for thermal power generation and shipping by the end of 2020, aiming to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050. Ryo Minami, Director of the Petroleum, Natural Gas and Mineral Resources Department at Japan’s Ministry of Economy, said that ammonia is expected to be used as a commercial fuel for power generation and shipping by the late 1920s, with widespread use anticipated by 2030. The Ammonia Council will explore expanding the scope of its supply chain, as ammonia is one of the fuels that can be burned alongside coal, with potential global trade demand amounting to 20 million tons. It should be noted that Japan’s latest plan to use ammonia as a zero-carbon dioxide fuel was developed after the country succeeded in creating technologies for eliminating nitrogen oxide emissions during combustion. Japan currently consumes about 1 million tons of ammonia per year, of which around 200,000 tons are imported. The country also plans to test 20% ammonia combustion starting from 2021/22. Ammonia is one of the most widely produced inorganic compounds in the world, with most of it being used to manufacture fertilizers. However, research teams from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan and Tohoku University recently announced jointly that they had successfully conducted experiments on gas turbine power generation using ammonia as a raw material. Researchers point out that although there are still issues such as difficulty in ignition and slow combustion speed, through further improvements, ammonia has the potential to be widely used as a clean fuel that does not emit carbon dioxide. The main products of ammonia combustion are water and nitrogen; therefore, by replacing a portion of traditional fuels such as oil with ammonia, carbon dioxide emissions can be significantly reduced. Going forward, the research team plans to further increase the proportion of ammonia in the fuel, with the goal of bringing ammonia-based power generation into practical use at an early date. Recently, Yara International (Oslo, Norway) announced the production of 500,000 tons per year of ammonia in Norway, which is intended to be used as a fuel for carbon-free shipping and in solutions for decarbonizing food.
The Japanese are really sneaky. Isn’t synthetic ammonia a major industry that emits carbon? Importing ammonia and putting carbon last – that’s a clever idea. Additionally, we need to be on guard against Japan using ammonia to produce nitric acid for weapons manufacturing.
The combustion products of ammonia are water and nitrogen oxides!
Japan should use green hydrogen to produce synthetic ammonia. That’s possible; ammonia synthesized from green hydrogen purchased from the Middle East can be used for combustion.
The combustion products of ammonia are mostly water and nitrogen; in the absence of precious metal catalysis, the amount of nitrogen oxides produced is extremely low, essentially on par with the nitrogen oxides present in the flue gases. Did you learn inorganic chemistry from your language teacher?
It depends on the speed at which nitrogen leaves the high-temperature area! !