Amogy and Trafigura to research ammonia cracking technology

(Posted on 25/09/22)

Amogy Inc., a pioneer of emission-free, energy-dense ammonia power solutions, and Trafigura, one of the largest physical commodity trading groups in the world, have announced an agreement to study the use of ammonia as a carrier to transport clean hydrogen from point of production to point of consumption. The findings of this joint research on ammonia cracking will help support industry-wide efforts to decarbonize transport and heavy industrial processes and lower carbon emissions to meet global climate goals.

Trafigura deploys infrastructure, logistics and financing to connect global producers and consumers of metals and minerals, oil and petroleum products and power and renewables through efficient and sustainable supply chains. The company is looking at future low-carbon sources of energy including technologies that can enable the high-volume transportation of zero emission fuels. Ammonia is viewed as a promising hydrogen carrier due to its high volumetric hydrogen density, enabling economic, long-distance transport of hydrogen.

Amogy’s ammonia-to-power platform features the company’s proprietary cracking technology that converts ammonia back into hydrogen. Following successful demonstrations, Amogy is now scaling up its technology for use in larger applications and pursuing strategic partnerships to support global decarbonization efforts.

Amogy and Trafigura will initiate a joint research effort tasked with identifying and assessing scenarios in which ammonia cracking technology can be deployed to support the growing hydrogen market, starting with Europe which is targeting 20 million tonnes of hydrogen consumption by 2030. Using economic models and energy demand forecasts, the two companies will determine the viability and cost effectiveness of industrial scale ammonia crackers.

“Our partnership with Trafigura opens up tremendous opportunities for the Amogy team to better understand and explore our platform’s potential benefits at scale,” said Seonghoon Woo, Chief Executive and Co-Founder at Amogy. “We look forward to collaborating with Trafigura to identify opportunities for large-scale ammonia cracking to enable global transportation of hydrogen.”

“At Trafigura, we recognize that hydrogen will need to be transported over long distances, from regions rich in renewable power to demand hubs. Ammonia is a cost competitive carrier of hydrogen which will require cracking at destination to cater to different end uses,” said Margaux Moore, Head of Energy Transition Research at Trafigura. “We believe ammonia cracking will be a key enabling technology for the large scale uptake of clean hydrogen. Our work with Amogy will help us understand the economics of this supply chain, to deliver the most competitive low carbon hydrogen to our customers.”

Ammonia is an energy-dense compound that is already traded on a global scale through its use in agriculture and supported by existing transportation and storage infrastructure. Scalable ammonia cracking technologies to generate hydrogen have the potential to help the European Union lower emissions from industry and heavy-duty transport.