Feature: Ammonia - Can it become the next 'green' fuel source?

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Experts say it is a potential energy 'gold mine' and one Ontario entrepreneur thinks he has the equipment to develop it. Others say it is capital-intensive and the technology still has some way to go

by MARY BAXTER

Roger Gordon has opened the driver's door on the cab of his Ford F-350 and is pointing to a small, rectangular box on the dashboard. The truck's gas-fueled engine chugs and gurgles.

Gordon, a tall, thin man in his late 50s who sports a grease-stained outdoors jacket as if it were a Bay Street suit, leans in and presses one of the box's buttons. "Notice it just changed a little bit?" He grins. He claims he has just switched the engine's fuel source. "That's as simple as it is."

Gordon, who lives on a 185-acre farm near Georgetown, has converted his truck engine to use one of the most common chemicals found on the farm: ammonia. He says the chemical is the answer to the world's dwindling oil and gas resources.

But not just any ammonia will do. Like cholesterol, there's the good and the bad. Green, made from renewable energy sources, is the good stuff. Brown, made from natural gas, a generator of greenhouse gases and the kind that is mostly available in Canada and the United States, is the bad.

Gordon is among a growing number of people who see a promising future for ammonia manufactured from a green energy source. Mostly they are members of university research communities or government labs. A lot of the work is taking place south of the border, where government policies are encouraging researchers to discover methods to ease U.S. reliance on imported fuel. There are studies underway in Europe and the Far East, too.

Ammonia may not be the flashiest commodity on the Chicago exchange, says Ted Pappenfus, an associate professor of chemistry in the University of Minnesota's division of science and mathematics, but there's no mistaking its global importance. First produced commercially in Norway in the early 1900s, ammonia is among the top 10 chemicals used around the world and is a key ingredient in nitrogen-based fertilizers.   

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the world produced more than 130 million metric tonnes of ammonia in 2009. That same year Canada produced 2.2 million tonnes and imported 252,000 tonnes of ammonia fertilizer. From July 2008 to June 2009, 208,000 tonnes of ammonia-related farm inputs ended up in Ontario.

"Whoever discovers how to make ammonia cheap is sitting on a gold mine," says Pappenfus.

Increasingly, researchers in the United States see the farm as the entry point to this gold mine. And not just as a major consumer. From ethanol to livestock urine, the farm offers many potential sources for ammonia's main components, hydrogen and nitrogen. It can also provide feedstock to fuel green energy production.

In Morris, Minn., the University of Minnesota's West Central Research and Outreach Center began construction this summer on a pilot plant that uses wind energy to make ammonia. Michael Reese, its director, says the main driver behind the project was to add value to wind energy.

There's a "huge" wind energy resource across the U.S. Midwest "but there is not nearly enough transmission capacity to be able to use that," he explains. Building transmission lines to move the load to centres is expensive. Producing a product such as ammonia does not require an on-demand power source and would generate local jobs.

It also provides a place for utilities to sink excess power at certain times of the day when they might otherwise have to pay others to use it.

Great heat, high pressure

Establishing a sustainable source also makes sense in the long-term, he adds. The United States imports much of its ammonia. Because most ammonia is made from natural gas, its prices have fluctuated dramatically. In March, anhydrous ammonia cost US$400-$500 per U.S. ton. A year earlier it cost $1,300 per ton; and in April 2007 about $300 per ton.

At the Minnesota plant, wind will power an electrolyzer to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. Other equipment will pull nitrogen from the air. Operators will use the Haber-Bosch process to combine the two components to form ammonia. The process uses great heat and high pressure to combine nitrogen and hydrogen gases during several passes over an enriched iron catalyst.

Reese describes the plant as small scale, producing 20-25 tons of ammonia per year. "We are a research entity so we're not going to be necessarily operating 24-7 with the system," he explains.

It's also capital-intensive: He estimates total costs, excluding the wind generator, to be US$3.75 million. Although the technology and principles behind the process are well established, the centre is the first in the world (that he's aware of) to create a plant that uses wind to generate ammonia.

"You can't just call up your local hardware store or contractor and have them order you an ammonia reactor," he says. Commercializing the system should reduce costs. And if natural gas prices rise again, taking the price of ammonia with them, the system could become financially viable.

Reese says such a system might serve a farmers' co-operative, and technological innovations may eventually make it viable for the individual farmer.

He notes that other green energy sources also hold potential for ammonia production. Biomass could be used to generate electricity; the methane gas produced when the biomass is burned could also be used as a source of hydrogen.

But using it in this way may be more expensive than using wind and water because, as in the use of natural gas as a feedstock, more processes are needed to remove the impurities in the hydrogen. "In order to justify that economically, the plants have to be enormous," he says.

Pappenfus says his department is researching a way to use the electricity from the wind turbine to create ammonia through an electrochemical approach. It eliminates the need to make hydrogen gas. "You still need a proton source," he says. (A proton, a small, positively charged particle, is a component of the nucleus of an atom. There is one of these in the nucleus of a hydrogen atom). The department is using ethanol to obtain these. Using ethanol creates another use for the fuel and keeps the production process within the agriculture loop, he says.

The process holds promise for small-scale, on-farm ammonia production. It won't require the heat or pressure levels that come with the Haber-Bosch process (not something a farmer might want next to the farm, he observes).

But the process is by no means efficient – yet. Of every 100 electrons that come off the turbine to make ammonia, only four end up being converted. "We have to be closer to 50 per cent," he says. Other research, principally in Japan, shows greater efficiencies. Until he sees more scale up of these technologies, however, Pappenfus won't get excited.

Manitoba interest

Manitoba producers are interested in Minnesota's research into linking sustainable ammonia production with agriculture. Manitoba's Keystone Agricultural Producers and Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute have proposed studying the feasibility of developing ammonia from a green resource.

Keystone is a provincial farm policy organization that represents farmers. Based in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the Institute specializes in agricultural research and development. In March, it was waiting to hear if the Manitoba Rural Adaptation Council and Manitoba Conservation's sustainable development initiative fund had approved funding for the $22,000-25,000 study. Keystone plans to fund 15 per cent of the project.
James Battershill, Keystone's policy analyst, says many farmers in his province want to diversify their operations by adding energy production. With the province's generous water resources, however, there hasn't been as much incentive to support other green energy ventures as there has been in Ontario.

Nitrogen-based fertilizers' price jump two years ago spurred interest in ammonia production. The idea was to combine on-farm energy production with excess capacity from the province's grid to create ammonia.

But it was "a little more complicated than we were originally expecting," says Battershill, noting that it was "significantly more expensive," too. Prices for the fertilizers fell but enough interest in the idea remained to give the study the go-ahead, he says.
Green ammonia production on the farm might hold promise, but, as with any prospecting, it is fraught with unproven claims and speculation.

Back in Ontario, on a Niagara Escarpment ridge that overlooks the small hamlet of Glen Williams, Gordon claims he has discovered how to make ammonia production affordable for the individual farmer. Gordon is the former president of Pure Pharmaceuticals Corporation, a U. S.-based penny stock company that specialized in selling medicated feed additives and micronutrients and has now moved into mining speculation.

He explains ammonia is used in pharmaceutical production "quite a bit" and he had acquired machines to make it. Gordon says he developed the machine that combines nitrogen and hydrogen into ammonia.

"We're just sorting molecules; we're not creating anything," he says, adding that the technology does not rely on the Haber-Bosch method, which he describes as the "antique" method.

He says the process can produce one litre for every seven kilowatt hours. He shows off four shelf-mounted machines in a ramshackle shed steps away from his rustic three-storey limestone-faced home. The machines click and hiss like steam engines. Beyond these, past a glass window that divides the shed, are bullet-shaped containers and more technology.

Gordon won't allow visitors into the shed's second section. He explains that he applied for a patent earlier this year on the equipment located there. Publicizing the details of the invention before the patent is granted might violate the application rules, he says.

There is no application listed in the national patent database under Gordon's name. An Industry Canada spokesperson says it takes 18 months for Canadian patent applications to be made public, but notes there is "no clear reason as to why an inventor would not show/disclose their invention" once the application is filed.

Gordon estimates it will take $10 million to launch production and says he has more than $1 million invested in the project and won't begin production until the company is financed. Once in production, he says he could build the machines for $50,000. The machine would produce 500 litres a day.

Pappenfus describes Gordon's cost estimates as surprisingly low. "If he can do it (for that amount), more power to him," he says.

Don Hilborn, an engineer specializing in innovation with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, says he has not heard of Gordon. Nor is he aware of using green energy to make ammonia. He estimates that using wind energy to pull nitrogen out of the air would cost "many millions" of dollars.

But the idea of using ammonia as a way to "package power" in locations that lack a way to move green-generated power out and blend with other power sources has merit, he says.

He's just not sure if the model fits in Ontario. "That's a big one. It's out of my league," he says, adding that "this is pretty sophisticated technology. You want to have it proven somewhere else."

Those interested in buying in should make sure they see the technology running and obtain a second opinion. And they need to ask questions, such as what is the operating cost, the capital cost, the time required to do it and the potential for connecting to the grid. They need to determine if what's being produced is a marketable, useable product and how it might affect items such as an engine's warranty.

"You've got to really go into all these things with your eyes wide open," he says. "You don't want to get caught with something that cost you a lot of money and it has some sort of problem, so it doesn't work." BF

Sidebar
: No greenhouse gases from ammonia, but it's highly toxic

Using ammonia as a fuel is not a new idea. It fuelled Belgium buses in the Second World War and, in the 1960s, the North American X-15 experimental airplane. Researchers continue to explore the possibility of developing fuel cells from ammonia as well as ways to "crack" it to access the hydrogen it contains for fuel.

On its website, the U.S.-based Ammonia Fuel Network, which promotes research in this field, notes that because a distribution network already exists to transport and store large quantities of ammonia as fertilizer, ammonia might be a more viable alternative than hydrogen as fuel for vehicles.

Ammonia does not contain carbon, so does not release greenhouse gases on combustion and is not flammable, the website says.

But it is toxic. A 2006 report prepared by the U.S. Department of Energy indicates a one per cent concentration of ammonia in the air is fatal to humans. It is also "highly toxic" to aquatic animals. And increasingly it is being used as an ingredient in illegal drugs. BF