Green Nitrates, development of new integrated production process for cost competitive and GHG emission free production of fertilizers.

Yara targets to become carbon neutral by 2050. An essential part of this target is to produce mineral fertilizer without greenhouse gas emissions. Such production is technically possible today, but far from being economical profitable. To achieve a profitable green fertilizer product, a new improved production process is required. This process must use renewable electrical energy as its only energy source, and further be characterised by reduced energy consumption through extensive internal energy recovery and integration, reduced CAPEX, and maximized process efficiency. The project will develop and qualify a new flexible and integrated production process for hydrogen, ammonia and nitric acid for production of mineral fertilizers based on green renewable electricity. To reduce existing cost gap between green and fossil-based fertilizer products we need process innovation with smart process-, heat- and energy integration, and optimal and safe operation both for CAPEX and OPEX reduction. We will develop new methods and design tools that deals with uncertainty and varying electricity supply and combine the design of the renewable intermittent energy sources such as solar and wind and green fertilizer process system. In order to achieve efficient operation , methods that use weather and other data to predict the future electricity supply from solar and wind to handle variations and to be able to optimize internally power usage will be developed. New digital solutions are needed to develop automatic ramp up/down and start-up/shut-down of process sections to handle intermittent energy supply. Achievement of the project targets will be an opportunity for future profitable green fertilizer production, and giving Yara a competitive position in a sustainable fertilizer and food market.

The objective of the project is to develop and qualify a new flexible integrated production process for fertilizers with zero GHG emissions based on green renewable electricity. For the next generation integrated flexible process system design we need innovation for green fertilizer process technology based on renewable intermittent energy. Key technologies are smart process-, heat- and energy integration to minimize need for storages, maximize capacity utilization of equipment and have optimal and safe operation to reduce CAPEX and OPEX. This will reduce the existing cost gap between green and fossil-based fertilizer products. The project work is described in 7 defined work packages that will lead to the achievement of the objective. That is; Process system integration, Design methods and tool, Power systems, electronics and storages, Electrolysis, Ammonia, Nitric acid and Operational excellence. The new power and process technology shall be developed to a TRL 5 level by end of 2023. Critical milestones for the R&D activities are: “Process system integration – Optimal plant design”; To design an integrated, robust and flexible process is crucial for this project. A novel improved production process is required with reduced CAPEX and OPEX. “Operational excellence – Advanced process optimization and control – Development and verification of a real time online optimization and control system for total process utilizing weather forecasting models. The advanced process control system is crucial to operate a process with variations in energy input and must be verified using real weather data using a digital twin. Achievement of the project targets will be an instrumental contribution to future profitable green fertilizer production, giving Yara a competitive position in a future sustainable fertilizer and food market.