Tag: US DOE

Bankruptcy for TCEP ends plans for “clean coal” ammonia in US

The company behind the Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP) filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2017, ending any hope that it would build its proposed million-ton-per-year "clean coal" urea plant.

This means that every one of the "clean coal" ammonia synthesis projects I've been tracking since 2012 has failed: in California, in Mississippi, and now in Texas. That's three strikes; if hydrogen sources were like baseball, coal would be out.

These projects all shared jaw-dropping cost escalations and multi-year delays that forced financing partners to withdraw.

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Next-generation ammonia tech: biohybrid nanoparticles

Sustainable ammonia can be produced today: doing so would use electrolyzers to make hydrogen to feed the traditional Haber-Bosch process. In a very few years, new technologies will skip this hydrogen production phase altogether and make ammonia directly from renewable power in an electrochemical cell. Further down the pipeline, next generation technologies will mimic nature, specifically the nitrogenase enzyme, which produces ammonia naturally.

One of these next generation technologies is currently producing impressive results at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

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ARPA-E funding for renewable ammonia synthesis technologies

Last week, ARPA-E announced funding for eight technologies that aim to make ammonia from renewable electricity, air, and water.

The technological pathways being developed include adaptations of the Haber-Bosch process - seeking improvements in catalysts and absorbents - as well as novel electrochemical processes.

Each of these awards must produce an "end-of-project deliverable." For chemical processes, this will be a "bench scale reactor" that produces >1 kg of ammonia per day; and for electrochemical projects, it will be a "short stack prototype" capable of producing >100 g of ammonia per day.

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Grand Challenges in Sustainable Ammonia Synthesis – DOE Roundtable Report, 2016

Earlier this year, the US Department of Energy (DOE) hosted a day-long meeting "to explore the scientific challenges associated with discovering alternative, sustainable processes for ammonia production."

The report that came out of this roundtable discussion presents the participants' views on "the current state-of-the-art and the potential challenges and research opportunities ... for heterogeneous catalysis and homogeneous and enzyme catalysis."

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Penwell, TX — TCEP

UPDATED: 02/16/2018 — see Change Log

OWNER: Texas Clean Energy Project (Summit Power Group LLC)
PROJECT: Greenfield plant, urea

SUMMARY STATUS: Bankrupt
The Texas Clean Energy Project was going to be a major "clean coal" power plant with significant urea byproduct but DOE effectively killed the project when it suspended funding. Initiated in 2010 and originally scheduled to be completed by 2014, the project continually failed to raise financing for such a long time that the DOE finally withdrew its support in mid-2016. In December 2016, the developers announced one last idea, ditching power generation altogether to focus on urea production but soon after, in October 2017, the company went bankrupt.

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