The World’s First Ammonia Powered Ship

Ammonia is the future of green fuel in ships. They are currently in the works of making this a reality.

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By: Olivia Rose, Journalist

In New York, Amogy Inc. has set themselves an ambitious goal. They want to create the world’s first ammonia powered ship before the end of this year. If they are successful this could lead to a new branch of commercial vessels next year. Transportations like the world of maritime are in a bad spot, being responsible for 3% of global carbon emissions. The industry is looking to switch to a greener source of energy. But resources such as electric batteries cannot support long haul transports. This brings them back to using ammonia as fuel. Ammonia could be very a very promising future for marine transportation.

Amogy, which was founded in 2020 aims to remove carbon from heavy-duty transportation with their ammonia based fuel plan. In the previous year the company demonstrated their ammonia based technology on heavy duty machinery such as tractors and  semi-trucks. They now would like to demonstrate using boats, starting with tug boats. Although this is not the first thing you think of when talking about sea vessels, but tug boats are a critical part of the shipping industry.

Even though Amogy before used ammonia as a combustion fuel, in this demonstration they will split the compound into hydrogen and nitrogen. So that the former can be used in a fuel cell to generate electricity and power electric motors. Although ammonia is not as energy-dense as diesel, the combustion does not lead to carbon emissions. Efforts are currently being made to make ammonia a more used greener fuel for transportation.

RELATED STORIES:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/why-the-shipping-industry-is-betting-big-on-ammonia

https://www.emsa.europa.eu/publications/item/4833-potential-of-ammonia-as-fuel-in-shipping.html

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/sea-transport/the-race-is-on-to-build-the-worlds-first-ammonia-powered-ship

https://www.globalmaritimeforum.org/news/ammonia-as-a-shipping-fuel

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nilsrokke/2021/10/05/ammonia-a-sustainable-fuel-option-for-shipping/

 

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https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/how-ammonia-could-decarbonise-shipping/4014674.article