Members of the chemical industry are major CO2 emitters. Capturing and trapping that carbon can bring them to net zero.
The combustion of fossil fuels is widely thought of as the cause of global CO2 emissions. While it is the major contributor, many process industries are large emitters as well, and many of those have few alternative technologies to reduce CO2 production. CF Industries, a large manufacturer of hydrogen and nitrogen products, has signed an agreement with ExxonMobil to capture and store CO2 generated by the company’s large Louisiana manufacturing complex. The development of this large-scale blue ammonia system may make ammonia a viable alternative as a motor fuel as well as an important chemical feedstock.
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In the global shift to move the world’s industrial economies toward zero CO2 emissions, there are many carbon sources to be addressed. Fossil fuel consumption is one, but so are the many industrial processes that are essential for modern society. The process industries use chemical feedstocks of which many are very energy intensive to produce but can’t be readily replaced by alternates.
Some of those chemicals can themselves be used to displace CO2-producing inputs, but the overall carbon balance has to be considered before switching to non-fossil fuel sources that may themselves have a heavy CO2 footprint.
CF Industries, a large global manufacturer of hydrogen and nitrogen products, has entered into the largest-of-its-kind commercial agreement with ExxonMobil to capture and permanently store up to 2 million metric tons of CO2 emissions annually from the company’s manufacturing complex in Louisiana. CF will build a $200,000,000 CO2 dehydration and compression unit at its Donaldsonville, Louisiana, facility. ExxonMobil will then pipe and permanently store the captured CO2 in a secure geologic storage complex the oil company owns in Vermilion Parish.
ExxonMobil has signed an agreement with EnLink Midstream to use EnLink’s pipeline network to deliver CO2 to the permanent geologic storage.
The 2 million metric tons of emissions captured annually will be equivalent to the CO2 output of approximately 700,000 gasoline-powered cars. CF Industries will use the system to scale up production of blue ammonia to put it did 1,700,000 tons annually.
The volume is significant, and the technology is important because ammonia is an essential industrial commodity used in fertilizers, plastics, pesticides, dyes and other industrial chemicals. Ammonia can also be burned as a fossil fuel replacement, with no CO2 emissions. While the CO2 reduction is itself good for the environment, the economic benefits have far-reaching implications.
Both ExxonMobil and EnLink Midstream are companies that rely on the fossil fuel industry, and CO2 sequestration represents a way for companies in this sector to use existing infrastructure and technology in a future where fossil fuel demand is expected to fall significantly.
Similarly, low-cost blue ammonia represents a carbon-free alternate fuel that can replace fossil fuels without extensive reengineering of industrial processes in many cases, particularly in the process industries.
Diesel engines can also be configured to run on ammonia. Will carbon sequestration technology make ammonia the fuel of the future? Wartsila, a maker of very large diesels for marine use, has tested ammonia with good results and the China Machinery Engineering Corporation is developing a green ammonia production process powered by solar energy, so the use cases for green and blue ammonia appear to be in place.
Whether or not ammonia makes sense as a fuel, 80 percent of global production goes into fertilizers, production of which cannot be curtailed for CO2 reduction reasons alone. Blue ammonia looks like a good alternative, and the Louisiana project will be the testing ground for the economic viability of CO2 sequestration in the American chemical industry.
