Techno-Economic Analysis of Hydrogen and Ammonia as Low Carbon Fuels for Power Generation

Abstract As the world focuses on the transition to low and zero-carbon energy systems, there are regions of the world that will continue to require imported fuels to meet their energy demands. In countries like Japan, renewable energy is not expected to meet all future energy demand. Therefore, these countries need to transition from importing carbon-based fossil fuels, to importing low or zero-carbon intensity fuels. Focusing on carbon-free molecules, hydrogen and ammonia are of great interest. Hydrogen can be produced directly via reformation or pyrolysis of natural gas or from electrolysis of water, and because it can be used directly as a fuel. But there are well known challenges associated with hydrogen storage and transport. Due to the limited options for transporting liquid hydrogen, there is a growing interest in using ammonia as a method to ship hydrogen. Multiple countries are considering importing ammonia instead of hydrogen. Once imported the ammonia could be cracked back to hydrogen or potentially used directly in several end use applications, potentially including power generation. However, there are trade-offs in the use of these fuels. Hydrogen has to be liquefied for transport. Producing ammonia requires added process steps. There are also impacts when using these fuels in a gas turbine. This paper will examine the issues in using these fuels in two parts. The first phase identifies the technical impacts of operating a gas turbine power plant on 100% hydrogen and 100% ammonia. The second phase examines the economic impact of the fuel selection, including the landed cost of the fuel and impact on levelized cost of electricity.