Blue and green ammonia production: A techno-economic and life cycle assessment perspective

Summary

Blue and green ammonia production have been proposed as low-carbon alternatives to emissions-intensive conventional ammonia production. Although much attention has been given to comparing these alternatives, it is still not clear which process has better environmental and economic performance. We present a techno-economic analysis and full life cycle assessment to compare the economics and environmental impacts of blue and green ammonia production. We address the importance of time horizon in climate change impact comparisons by employing the Technology Warming Potential, showing that methane leakage can exacerbate the climate change impacts of blue ammonia in short time horizons. We represent a constrained renewable electricity availability scenario by comparing the climate change impact mitigation efficiency per kWh of renewable electricity. Our work emphasizes the importance of maintaining low natural gas leakage for sustainability of blue ammonia, and the potential for technological advances to further reduce the environmental impacts of photovoltaics-based green ammonia.

Graphical abstract

Highlights

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  Economic and environmental comparison of blue and green ammonia production

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  Consideration of time horizon in climate change impact comparison

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  Natural gas leakage exacerbates environmental impacts of blue ammonia

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  Environmental impacts of green ammonia are driven by high electricity requirements

Abstract

Energy resources; Energy policy; Energy engineering; Energy Modeling