WES - what's next?, page-36

I wrote what follows today, so your post gives me a logical point to past what I wrote about clean hydrogen, or clean ammonia as I prefer to think of it from a WES perspective. I do not hold WES.

My view is that WES will invest in areas it understands, and ammonia is one of them. Ammonia, a compound of hydrogen and nitrogen, is an excellent hydrogen carrier, so what is said about green hydrogen in the popular media substantially applies to green ammonia. If one has the hydrogen, getting nitrogen from the atmosphere to make ammonia is not a problem.

Ammonia can be used as a substitute for diesel in ore mining equipment, ore trains and ocean-going ore carriers. This is what interests Twiggy Forrest, and although he harps on about things green, he will, IMO, start off using natural gas to make ammonia, which is what WES does now. If the green bit never happens, so be it.

Green ammonia can be made from water, air and electricity. Water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, and these can be separated by electrolysis, but it needs very cheap electricity, and lots of it. Air is 78% nitrogen, and filtering out the non-nitrogen gases produces nitrogen, which is already a viable way to produce nitrogen – see https://www.oxair.com.au/how-it-works/how-n

It may be better to start with less-than-green ammonia (use grey hydrogen, or blue hydrogen if available) to create the demand and infrastructure to facilitate the green dream being realised later – see https://www.powermag.com/carbon-neutral-blue-hydrogen-can-be-more-than-a-bridge-in-a-transformed-hydrogen-economy/. Grey hydrogen is made from natural gas, carbon-neutral blue hydrogen implies that the carbon dioxide is captured, rather than being emitted into the atmosphere.

Interesting links are https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/organization/wesfarmers/, which links to https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/articles/green-financing-sighted-in-australias-ammonia-industry/. Also see https://www.csbp.com.au/products/AAN/ammonia