Description

Yara Clean Ammonia’s green hydrogen plant in Porsgrunn is Europe’s largest operational facility of its kind. Located at Herøya Industrial Park, the plant uses a 24 MW proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer supplied by ITM Power to produce ~10,000 kg of hydrogen per day. This hydrogen replaces ethane and propane as feedstock in ammonia synthesis, enabling the production of ~20,000 tonnes of ammonia.

At Yara’s Porsgrunn facility, water from Lake Norsjø is purified and sent to the 24 MW electrolyser plant. Direct current electricity splits the water molecule into oxygen and hydrogen. Oxygen, together with excess water, is sent to the oxygen water separator. The hydrogen stream is purified via a catalyst that removes residual oxygen. After cooling and drying, the hydrogen is piped to the ammonia plant, where it is mixed with nitrogen to form ammonia through high-pressure synthesis. The ammonia is fed to the ammonia grid/storage tanks to be used to produce fertilizer. It can also be used as an emission-free shipping fuel, for power generation or as an energy carrier.

The project saves up to 41,000 tons of CO2 emissions annually, equivalent to the emissions of approximately 16,000 cars.

The plant was built by Linde Engineering and was supported with 283 million NOK grant by Enova which is a state enterprise owned by the Ministry of Climate and Environment. 

Lessons Learned

• Scaling up of technology: the technology is ready and PEM electrolyzers can be scaled for industrial production 
• Policy support: public financing was awarded 
• Infrastructure integration: leverage existing assets improves profitability and accelerates deployment 

Additional sources

https://www.yara.com/news-and-media/media-library/press-kits/renewable-hydrogen-plant-heroya-norway/