Page 5 - DMEA Week 25 2022

DMEA COMMENTARY DMEA

total funding to nearly $70mn since it was estab- comes to blue hydrogen … We’re putting our
lished in 2020. money where our mouth is on hydrogen. We
The company labels itself “a pioneer of have a terrific gas base in Jafurah [and] we will
emission-free, energy-dense ammonia power use it to generate blue hydrogen,” he said.
solutions” and after “recent successful demon- This followed its entry into the sector along-
strations of the first ever ammonia-powered, side Japan’s Institute of Energy Economics (IEEJ)
zero-emission farming tractor and aerial drone” in September 2020, when the company shipped
it will use the bridge round funds “to accelerate its first cargo of blue ammonia to Japan to be
the commercialisation of its energy-dense power used in zero-carbon power generation.
solution that will decarbonise heavy-duty trans- The 40-tonne shipment was generated by
portation and enable leading cargo and fleet Aramco and was made in collaboration with
owners to eliminate fossil fuels and reduce emis- Saudi Arabian Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC)
sions from their supply chain”. and IEEJ.
Responding to questions via social media, Aramco said that during the process of gen-
Amogy said it had “developed a compact, erating the ammonia, it had captured 50 tonnes
high-efficiency reactor that cracks ammonia of carbon dioxide (CO2). Thirty tonnes will be
onboard and uses hydrogen to generate power used in methanol production at SABIC’s Ibn-
through a fuel cell”. Sina facility, with the remainder to be used in
Its CEO, Seonghoon Woo, explained: “The enhanced oil recovery (EOR) at Aramco’s ‘Uth-
problem the company is solving is basically the maniyah field.
problem of the battery,” noting that while bat- In a presentation, Aramco said that the pro-
teries are a good solution for small modes of duction of blue ammonia had spanned the entire
transportation, they face practical limitations value chain, supporting the company’s recent
in heavier-fuel vehicles, including planes, ships claims of investing in the circular economy.
and trucks. Natural gas was taken from ‘Uthmaniyah and
The company views ammonia as “an optimal converted to hydrogen at a dedicated facility in
fuel for […] areas that have all proven difficult Jubail, with the CO2 captured at a nearby facility
to decarbonise”, saying it aims to reduce roughly and returned to ‘Uthmaniyah and sent to Jubail
5bn tonnes of CO2 equivalent of emissions by Methanol Plant.
2040 “while accelerating the global journey Nitrogen was added to the hydrogen at the
towards net zero by 2050”. Jubail Ammonia Plant to create blue ammo-
“The energy storage system we’ve built basi- nia, which was then dispatched by sea to Japan,
cally converts ammonia to electrons very effi- where it will be separated and used to power the
ciently in a small footprint, so you can use it in 50-kW Koriyama micro gas turbine, the 2-MW
different vehicles,” Woo said. Yokohama gas turbine and a co-firing boiler in
For Aramco, the modest investment marks a Aioi.
step down the hydrogen value chain. Last year, However, Aramco’s chief technology officer,
Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz Ahmad al-Khowaiter, said in 2021 that while
bin Salman said that the giant Jafurah unconven- the company would have “a large share” of the
tional gas basin would be leveraged to produce hydrogen market, he cautioned: “The scale up
blue hydrogen as the country seeks to extend its isn’t going to happen before 2030. We’re not
leadership of the oil sector into hydrogen. going to see large volumes of blue ammonia
“We are the biggest adventurers when it before then.”™

Week 25 23•June•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P5