Elsevier

Progress in Energy and Combustion Science

Ammonia for power

Under a Creative Commons license

open access

Abstract

A potential enabler of a low carbon economy is the energy vector hydrogen. However, issues associated with hydrogen storage and distribution are currently a barrier for its implementation. Hence, other indirect storage media such as ammonia and methanol are currently being considered. Of these, ammonia is a carbon free carrier which offers high energy density; higher than compressed air. Hence, it is proposed that ammonia, with its established transportation network and high flexibility, could provide a practical next generation system for energy transportation, storage and use for power generation. Therefore, this review highlights previous influential studies and ongoing research to use this chemical as a viable energy vector for power applications, emphasizing the challenges that each of the reviewed technologies faces before implementation and commercial deployment is achieved at a larger scale. The review covers technologies such as ammonia in cycles either for power or CO2 removal, fuel cells, reciprocating engines, gas turbines and propulsion technologies, with emphasis on the challenges of using the molecule and current understanding of the fundamental combustion patterns of ammonia blends.

Keywords

Ammonia

NH3

Power generation

Renewable energy storage

Dr. Agustin Valera-Medina is a Senior Lecturer in Cardiff School of Engineering. His research interests include alternative fuels, hydrodynamics, flame stabilization, fuel injection, heat transfer and combustion technologies. He has participated as PI/CI on 18 industrial projects with multi-nationals including GE, PEMEX, Rolls-Royce, Siemens, Alstom, Ricardo and EON. He has published 105 papers, 17 of these specifically concerning ammonia power. He has supervised 20 PhD students - with 9 successfully graduated - and 2 PDRAs since his appointment in 2012. He has won international conference awards including AIAA 'Best Paper in Terrestrial Technologies' in 2010 and 2013, and the SDEWES SEE 2018 "Best Paper". His international works on ammonia are underway with universities such as Oxford, Trinity College Dublin, NUS, Tsinghua, Xiamen, Exeter, Leicester, Loughborough, UCL, Imperial College, CIDESI, Educon, etc. and companies such as Siemens, Yara, Tokyo Gas, C-Job Naval, amongst many others. He is a member of the ETN Ammonia Gas Turbines subgroup. Dr Valera-Medina currently leads Cardiff's contribution to the Innovate-UK 'Decoupled Green Energy' Project (2015–2018) led by Siemens and in partnership with STFC and the University of Oxford, which aims to demonstrate the use of green ammonia produced from wind energy for production, storage and conversion to power of this chemical.

Dr Hua Xiao is a recently graduated researcher working on the topic of Ammonia Power Generation in Gas Turbines. He passed his VIVA in May 2018. He has participated as first author and co-author of 11 publications related to ammonia gas turbines and improvement of chemical reaction models for the use of this chemical. He has worked in the topics of combined cycles, micro flame stability systems, power plants using heavy fuels and waste utilization, amongst many other topics. He was supported through a CSC scholarship provided by the Chinese government to complete his PhD topic at Cardiff University, and has recently received confirmation of his new post as Research Assistant at Tsinghua University, China, as a member of the Centre for Combustion Energy.

Prof Martin Owen-Jones is the Energy Materials and CDT coordinator at the ISIS Facility (UK), being honorary professor at the University of St Andrews since 2015. He graduated from Nottingham University where he also did his PhD studies. After that he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Birmingham, ERASMUS Research Fellow at the CRISMAT research facility, Caen (France) and Director of Research for Professor Peter Edwards at the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory, Oxford. He took up his present positions in November 2011 and teaches Inorganic Chemistry at Lincoln. Professor Jones' research interests centre on the study of energy materials, ranging from superconductors, through transparent conducting oxides and hydrogen storage materials to catalysts and in particular research into low-carbon energy storage systems. His recent work has focused on the development of systems to detect, store and utilise ammonia as a chemical energy storage medium.

Prof Bill David is a Fellow of the Royal Society. His research spans the fields of energy materials chemistry and the atomic, molecular and nano-structure of materials at Oxford University and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) UK. The energy materials studies centre where he is an active research member works on the discovery and characterisation of novel chemical energy storage systems, focusing in developing hydrogen and ammonia as energy vectors. He uses neutron and synchrotron X-ray diffraction combined with computational modelling as part of the principal techniques for the structural elucidation of materials. In the area of energy materials, his studies have included in-situ neutron powder diffraction measurements combined with gravimetric analysis for the study of reversible lightweight hydrogen storage materials and mass spectrometry for the investigation of novel ammonia decomposition materials.

Prof Bowen spent 5 years working for Shell Research at Thornton Research Centre studying very large multi-phase explosion hazards after the Piper-Alpha disaster in the North Sea, before joining the Energy Group at Cardiff School of Engineering in 1994. He led the £7.8 M project (2004–7) to relocate the former UK Defence Evaluation Research Agency (DERA) national gas turbine combustion research facility from Farnborough (Pyestock) to Port Talbot, launched by former Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan in 2007. The rebranded Gas Turbine Research Centre (GTRC), for which Phil is founding Director, has since been enhanced to enable studies of multi-component fuel mixtures relevant to electrical power generators, and also optical combustors enabling laser-based interrogation of the combustion and emission processes. Phil has been awarded over £30 M as PI/CI from over 100 grants, published over 200 peer reviewed publications and supervised to completion 30 PhD students over 22 years as an academic. He has served on many national and international executive/steering committees and currently serves on the International Energy Agency (IEA) Technology Collaboration Programme (for Combustion and Emission Reduction), RCUK 'Energy' strategic advisory committee, British Section of the Combustion Institute, Trustee for UK Explosion Liaison Group, etc.

© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.