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Green hydrogen can be used to produce green ammonia

Ammonia (NH₃) is a gas composed of nitrogen and hydrogen, commonly used in fertilizers, industrial processes, and as a refrigerant. Traditional ammonia production relies heavily on fossil fuel-powered processes to create the necessary hydrogen. Green ammonia is a low-emissions form of ammonia produced using green hydrogen and clean electricity.1

The first step to producing green ammonia is to produce hydrogen to be used as a feedstock. To qualify as “green ammonia” the hydrogen must be green hydrogen, a type of hydrogen production that uses only water and clean electricity. Nitrogen, the other essential component of ammonia, is obtained from the air. The hydrogen and nitrogen are then fed into the Haber-Bosch process, a well-established industrial method for synthesizing ammonia (NH₃) by reacting hydrogen and nitrogen under high pressure and temperature in the presence of a catalyst. In green ammonia production, the Haber-Bosch process is powered by clean energy sources.2

Green ammonia production results in dramatically fewer greenhouse gas emissions than traditional ammonia production. Over 90% of carbon dioxide emissions from ammonia production result from the steam methane reforming (SMR) process used to produce dirty hydrogen. 3 Therefore, replacing steam methane reforming with electrolysis dramatically reduces the emissions intensity of ammonia production. Powering the Haber-Bosch process with clean electricity further reduces the direct emissions from ammonia production.

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Footnotes​

  1. Jones, N. (2020, January 20). From Fertilizer to Fuel: Can ‘Green’ Ammonia Be a Climate Fix? Yale Environment 360. https://e360.yale.edu/features/from-fertilizer-to-fuel-can-green-ammonia-be-a-climate-fix#:~:text=By%20Nicola%20Jones%20%E2%80%A2%20January,the%20University%20of%20Minnesota%20project ↩

  2. The Royal Society. (2020, February). Ammonia: zero-carbon fertilizer, fuel and energy store. https://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/low-carbon-energy-programme/green-ammonia ↩

  3. Bora, N., Singh, A. K., Pal, P., Sahoo, U. K., Seth, D., Rathore, D. & Sarangi, P. K. (2024). Green ammonia production: Process technologies and challenges. Fuel, 369, 131808. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016236124009566 ↩