IHI Corporation and Idemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd. said they will jointly work on the study for building an ammonia supply chain. Under this agreement, both companies will utilize existing facilities such as storage facilities and petrochemical equipment at the Tokuyama Plant to consider making the plant an ammonia import base and demonstrating ammonia co-firing in existing naphtha decomposition furnaces. In addition, Idemitsu Kosan will consider importing blue and green ammonia from overseas and supplying ammonia to refineries and other neighboring offices.

 

As the Japanese government declares the realization of carbon neutrality in 2050, public-private efforts to realize a hydrogen carrier chain using hydrogen and ammonia are accelerating as one of the concrete measures. The production of blue ammonia, which captures and stores CO2 emitted during manufacturing, and green ammonia, which uses renewable energy, has just begun to be investigated and studied overseas. Facility development for building a commercial-scale supply chain, including import bases, requires consideration from a medium- to long-term perspective, and more efficient and early demonstrations are required.

 

Idemitsu Kosan has been studying the construction of a hydrogen/ ammonia supply chain, including the participation of the Tokuyama Plant and Group Refineries in the Carbon Neutral Port Study Group of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism last year, and has procured blue and green ammonia from overseas. We have been considering collaboration with other companies for the purpose. In particular, the Tokuyama Plant shut down its crude oil refining facility in 2014, and quickly completed the conversion from the petroleum refining business as a manufacturing base for petrochemical raw materials. In January of this year, we started operation of a high-efficiency naphtha cracking furnace that can achieve an energy-saving effect of about 30% compared to the conventional one, and further accelerated efforts for decarbonization such as construction of a biomass power plant scheduled to start operation in 2022. These efforts are efficiently realized by utilizing the infrastructure that was conventionally used in the oil refining business.

 

IHI has been promoting technological development related to ammonia combustion since 2014, and is leading the world in technological development for co-firing coal or natural gas and ammonia as fuel for power generation equipment. So far, we have achieved 70% co-firing of liquid ammonia in a 2,000kW class gas turbine for the first time in the world, and we plan to conduct a demonstration test of co-firing ammonia in a commercial coal-fired power plant in the future. In addition, with a view to social implementation of fuel ammonia, we are studying the construction of an ammonia supply chain in Japan and overseas.

 

The two companies have been collaborating on storage facilities at the Tokuyama Plant. Under this agreement, Idemitsu Kosan will utilize those existing infrastructure facilities owned by the Tokuyama Plant to study ammonia supply chain demonstrations and obtain permits in Japan. IHI will utilize ammonia storage and combustion technology to study ammonia storage equipment, receipt and shipment equipment, and ammonia combustion demonstration.

 

Utilizing the strengths of both companies, they will contribute to the realization of a carbon-neutral society by quickly realizing a globally advanced ammonia supply chain.