Seminars

Ammonia is the basis of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer production and is thus the backbone of modern agriculture. Its large-scale production using the classic Haber-Bosch process, with hydrogen obtained from fossil fuels, is responsible for 1-2% of both global energy consuption and CO₂ emmissions. Reducing the carbon intensity of ammonia production is critical to a more sustainable agricultural system. Furthermore, ammonia’s relative ease of storage and transportation (compared to hydrogen), and its potential use as a power/heat generation or transportation fuel with no associated carbon emissions at the point of use, give it considerable promise as a sustainable energy vector, provided it can be produced in a low emissions manner. For these reasons, green ammonia, i.e., ammonia synthesized from hydrogen obtained from water electrolysis and nitrogen obtained from air using renewable electricity, is currently receiving world-wide attention from governments, industry, non-governmental organizations, and private investors. Green ammonia requires more distributed siting and smaller-scale production facilities than traditional ammonia due the inherently localized nature of renewable resources and the relative lack of economies of scale for electrolysis technologies. Optimal design and deployment are critical factors for its economic competitiveness.  

 In this talk, I will describe recent advances in the production, deployment, and utilization of green ammonia that address these challenges. These include:

• The concurrent design and scheduling of ammonia synthesis processes that operate dynamically, as a framework for accounting for the intermittency of the main feedstock (wind or solar irradiance) to minimize the levelized cost of production.
• A supply chain optimization framework for optimal placement of distributed, modular, ammonia production facilities to meet local fertilizer demands.
• The optimal design of a green ammonia-based system where ammonia is used as fertilizer, grain drying fuel, tractor fuel, and energy storage medium on a farm, as an illustration of the potential benefits from the synergistic use of ammonia across multiple sectors.
• The optimal design, scheduling, and operation of islanded renewable microgrids which utilize ammonia for energy storage.

Outstanding challenges on deploying green ammonia production at scale, as well as adopting its utilization across multiple sectors, will also be discussed.

Prodromos Daoutidis is a College of Science and Engineering Distinguished Professor and holder of the Amundson Chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota. He is also the Founding Director of the M.S. degree program in Data Science for Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Director of the National Science Foundation 3DEAP Research Traineeship Program. He received a Diploma degree in Chemical Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, M.S.E. degrees in Chemical Engineering and Electrical Engineering: Systems from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan. He is the recipient of several awards, including the IChemE Hutchison Medal, the AIChE Sustainable Engineering Forum Research Award, the AIChE Computing in Chemical Engineering Award, the C.A. Floudas Award in Mathematical Optimization, the PSE Model Based Innovation Prize, and Best Paper Awards from the Journal of Process Control and Computers and Chemical Engineering. He has served as CAST Programming Chair and CAST Chair and is currently the President of FIPSE. Daoutidis is the Associate Editor for Process Systems Engineering in the AIChE Journal and an Associate Editor in the Journal of Process Control. He has co-authored 5 books and 350 refereed papers and has supervised to completion 36 Ph.D. students and 5 post-docs, 15 of whom currently hold academic positions. His current research is on control and optimization of complex and networked systems, and the engineering and economics of green ammonia for sustainable energy and agriculture applications.