FuelPositive, a Canadian growth-stage technology company, has developed a shipping-container-sized ammonia synthesizer system that will produce zero-emissions green ammonia from renewable hydrogen at a cheaper price than highly polluting grey ammonia. Its green ammonia technology is a modular, scalable and portable system for producing green ammonia for use across a broad spectrum of industries and applications.
While there are many parties working on it, attempts until now have been too expensive, putting them out of reach of end-users. About 80% of traditional or “grey” ammonia, which is produced using fossil fuels, is used by the agriculture sector, primarily as fertilizer. For green ammonia to be embraced by farmers, it must be affordable. FuelPositive is targeting farming for its first demonstration pilot project.
FuelPositive’s system is built into a shipping container, and thus extremely easy to transport and can be installed anywhere that ammonia is required – eliminating transport costs of NH3. It accepts water, air, and electricity as inputs – preferably clean electricity from on-site solar or wind.
For this purpose, FuelPositive has worked from a case study based on a 1,800-acre farm in Manitoba, Canada, where the average price of grey ammonia in 2021 has been calculated at CA$900 ($712) per tonne. The initial FuelPositive systems will produce up to 300 kg (500 liters) of green anhydrous ammonia per day, which amounts to roughly 100 tonnes per year at costs around CA$560 ($444) per metric tonne. This output is suitable for the model farm of 1,800 acres.
Larger farms would simply add sufficient production capacity to meet their needs – easily done since FuelPositive’s green ammonia production units are modular, scalable, and portable for precisely this purpose.
FuelPositive is forecasting under CA$500 ($396) per metric tonne for future systems as production efficiencies improve, adding that further price reductions could come from carbon offsets, as each tonne of green NH3 replaces four tonnes of CO2. The electricity cost represents the largest component of the overall cost of the green ammonia produced in the FuelPositive system.
The company began to build its first full-sized prototype system in June, while the building of the second and third prototypes is scheduled to begin before the end of 2021. By the end of March 2022, the team will be validating the purity of the green ammonia produced by the first prototype system. Pre-orders will begin at that point. The first pilot system will be ready to deploy in the summer of 2022. The second and third systems will deploy later in 2022, with serial manufacturing not slated to begin until 2023.
