Haldor Topsoe to Develop Green Ammonia for Marine Fuel in Germany

The race is on to build the infrastructure necessary to support the shipping industry’s conversion to alternative fuel sources. The latest announcement is a plan to build a facility that will produce green hydrogen from renewable electricity that can then be converted into ammonia that can be used as a marine fuel.

Aquamarine Investment Partners, a global institutional investor and manager of private capital, is leading the project to develop the plant which will be located in northern Germany. They signed an MoU with the Danish company Haldor Topsoe, which is working on several projects to produce green hydrogen, green ammonia, eMethanol, and green fuels.

The plant will be developed in multiple stages using Topsoe’s proprietary solid oxide electrolyzer cells (SOEC) to produce green hydrogen from 100 megawatts of renewable electricity. According to the companies, Topsoe’s high-temperature electrolysis SOEC technology produces up to 30 percent more green hydrogen when compared to standard technology such as PEM and alkaline electrolysis.

The hydrogen will be further processed using Topsoe technology to produce 300 tons/day of green ammonia. The ammonia can then be used as a green marine fuel or as fertilizer. The plant is expected to be operational by 2024.

Aquamarine will develop the project and seek relevant permits for the project, which will be located in northern Germany close to existing offshore wind farms, where the product can be sold to the marine shipping industry.

“We are delighted to be working with Haldor Topsoe toward the commercial application on its cutting edge SOEC technology to bring green products to market as part of the global move toward decarbonization. We expect to be soon announcing other partners who will be joining the effort, as we move forward to build HydrGEN into a global green hydrogen products leader,” says Joel H. Moser, Founder and CEO at Aquamarine.

The project will also build on Topsoe’s current efforts to produce green hydrogen, green ammonia, eMethanol, and green fuels. In July 2020, Topsoe announced the Helios project in NEOM, Saudi Arabia, which includes the world’s largest ammonia loop (1.2 million tons per year). “We look forward to our partnership with Aquamarine on our SOEC and ammonia technology,” says Amy Hebert, Chief Commercial Officer, Topsoe. “This project is innovative in both its use of cutting-edge technology and its scale.”