Yara enters Hystar’s pilot project to explore ammonia production

Yara Clean Ammonia, a unit of fertiliser company Yara International, has joined a trial project to test a new way of producing the green ammonia through a technology being developed by fellow Norwegian tech company Hystar.

PHOTO: Yara Birkeland, a fully electric container ship developed by Yara in collaboration with Kongsberg. Yara International

The project, which is called the HyPilot project, will test the Hystar’s proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyser technology under “field conditions” and check its commercial viability in the long run. It has been commissioned to the second half of 2023.

PEM electrolysers split water into hydrogen and oxygen electrochemically. These electrolysers have increasingly been explored lately as the technology can produce hydrogen fuel using renewable electricity. The hydrogen made from this method can be used in the production of green ammonia.

Yara intends to use the knowledge acquired from this pilot project to produce green ammonia.

Green ammonia is viewed as a viable future source of energy for the shipping industry, and a flurry of recent projects bear testament to that.

Yara has been developing what could become one of the world's first ammonia bunker and loading stations. It partnered with Norwegian bunker firm Azane Fuel Solutions on the project. Azane has ordered several of these stations and the idea is roll them out all over Scandinavia. Last month these stations got an approval by classification society DNV.

Earlier this month, Singapore-based shipping company AET teamed up with Thai gas company PTT to develop and build two Aframaxes that can run on green ammonia.

Finnish shipping company Meriaura, technology firm Wärtsilä and green ammonia start-up Green NortH2 Energy have teamed up to build a cargo vessel that can run on green ammonia.

German energy firm Uniper and Dutch terminal operator Vesta Terminals signed a deal to explore ways to refurbish and expand an existing storage facility in Netherlands’ Vlissingen to handle 960,000 mt of green ammonia by 2026.

By Tuhin Roy

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