Category: Sustainability/Environment

Methanol continues to be a front runner among alternative fuels for the shipping industry. However, concerns remain over the availability and cost of green and blue methanol.

NextChem Tech, has signed a contract with Paul Wurth SA, a subsidiary of SMS group, and Norsk e-Fuel AS for a licensing and engineering design package relating to its NX CPO (catalytic partial oxidation) technology, which will be used in an industrial scale plant producing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) from green hydrogen and biogenic CO2 in Mosjøen, Norway. NextChem’s NX CPO technology produces synthesis gas via a very fast controlled partial oxidation reaction. When applied to synthetic fuel production, it can improve carbon efficiency recovery yield. The first plant developed by Norsk e-Fuel will have a production capacity of 40,000 t/a of green fuel and will enter operation after 2026. Based on the initial design, two additional facilities with a capacity of around 80 000 t/a each are planned to be built by 2030. The fuels will current aviation emissions.

Low carbon intensity hydrogen and ammonia production schemes from KBR, Air Liquide, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Casale and Johnson Matthey.

As the production of renewable methanol continues to scale up, it will provide a long term, carbon-neutral energy solution to different transport sectors. However, the optimum design parameters for green methanol plants are substantially different to natural gas-based methanol plants and pose new challenges to the methanol loop designer. Connor Longland of Johnson Matthey (JM) discusses the challenges and presents the benefits of the tube cooled converter for e-methanol production.

KBR offers an end-to-end digitalisation solution specifically designed for green ammonia plants to balance the available renewable resources and consistently deliver the lowest levelised cost of green ammonia (LCOA). This article outlines some of the key modules of the KBR end-toend digitalisation solution developed to overcome the challenges in green ammonia operation and achieve best in class, safe and reliable plant operation.

The ammonia industry is expected to change drastically in the coming years to meet sustainability goals and to face the problem of climate change. New low carbon ammonia plants as well as fully green facilities are expected to be commissioned to meet the target of climate neutral production. The integration of an existing ammonia facility with green hydrogen to supplement or replace the grey ammonia production with green ammonia represents a low-risk solution to meet the requirement for running clean ammonia plants and offers the most competitive green ammonia production cost in the short term. In this article Sergio Panza and Marco M. Carlucci of Casale paper present different scenarios based on energy availability at battery limits.

With the current focus on decarbonising ammonia production, Tom Davison of Johnson Matthey explains the important role of high activity ammonia synthesis catalyst in the production of green ammonia.

Distributed and carbon-free ammonia production with Stami Green Ammonia technology offers a highly competitive alternative to conventional grey processes, paving the way for scaling up and sustaining local communities with renewable energy sources.

With low carbon ammonia and methanol being considered not just for their chemical and fertilizer uses, but as fuels, can we make enough of them to fill our energy needs?

A sulphuric acid plant in Northwest China is looking to capture its low-grade heat for re-use. With the support of Alfa Laval’s semi-welded plate heat exchangers and energy recovery expertise, in winter, all of the recovered low-grade heat could be put back into their system with 30% being used in production and the remaining 70% going to heating. During the summer, 14% of the energy that is no longer needed for indoor heating could be used to preheat boiler feedwater. This would enable them to significantly reduce the amount of fossil fuels used in production, without redesigning their entire factory footprint.