Technological advances of ammonia as energy storage solution

Abstract

The renewable energy is playing an important role in transitioning to the decarbonization of the entire energy value chain. But how will the global energy industry accelerate this transition? Renewables and electrification of energy could be a perfect solution. However, intermittency of renewable energy production is the single biggest challenge faced by renewable energy sources, which can be mitigated when it is coupled with an appropriate energy storage system. First, you need to generate electricity from renewable sources and then store it so that it can be extracted whenever there is a demand. There are several energy storage systems that can be coupled with renewables such as fossil fuel storage, mechanical storage, thermal storage, electrochemical storage, and chemical storage. Studies have shown that chemical storage technologies provide clear advantage in terms of storage time and range of power it can store over other similar technologies. It also justifies the recent research activities around various new chemical storage technologies. A combination of the above energy systems works very well for most of the abundant and affordable energy. However, one area where there can be a significant improvement is the carbon emissions associated with fossil fuel-based storage systems. As a result, the energy industry is recently interested in the transition to renewables coupled with non-carbon storage of power as a long term solution to environmental issues. So the possible solution is producing chemical storage options from surplus renewable energy which solves both the hurdles of emissions as well as carbon-free energy storage system. This article analyses whether ammonia can be viewed as an efficient and technological solution to the problem of large-scale and long-duration energy storage in the decarbonized energy systems of the future. Throughout the article, references have been drawn from a wide range of resources and author’s academic and industrial experience. It is intended to use the article as a vehicle to share knowledge with a wide range of audience on utilization of ammonia for energy storage.