Techno-Economic Analysis for Solar-to-Ammonia

Abstract

This work focuses on investigating the economics of producing ammonia using solar energy. Ammonia is one of the most highly produced inorganic chemicals. The global demand for ammonia is increasing each year. Hence the idea of producing green ammonia becomes more appealing from an environmental perspective. The concept is that modifications to the regular water electrolysis that is powered by solar energy may allow for producing ammonia in the same electrolyzer by pumping pure nitrogen and let it react with hydrogen inside the electrolyzer stack. The change is also compared to producing ammonia via two phases, by utilizing water electrolysis and ammonia formation loop that is powered by solar energy. The goal of this project is to study the Levelized cost of ammonia when connecting water/ammonia electrolyzer to P.V. solar cells and then compare it with the cost of producing ammonia from the Haber-Bosch process. This work considers different countries around the world, namely several states in the US, Germany, several regions in the Arab Gulf and China.

Date of Award	May 2020
Original language	American English