Incitec Pivot Ltd. (IPL), Southbank, Melbourne, said it will partner with global green energy company Fortescue Future Industries Pty Ltd. (FFI) on a feasibility study into industrial-scale production of green ammonia at the company’s existing Gibson Island fertilizer manufacturing facility at Brisbane, Queensland.
The study will assess whether industrial-scale manufacturing of green ammonia at Gibson Island is technically and commercially feasible on an existing brownfield site, IPL said on Oct. 11.
The building of a new water electrolysis facility at the Gibson Island site to produce around 50,000 mt/y of renewable hydrogen, which would then be converted into green ammonia for Australian and export markets, is being investigated, it said.
According to IPL, the partnership is considered one of Australia’s best near-term opportunities to produce green ammonia on an industrial scale.
“By investigating the re-purposing of Gibson Island, we can make use of the existing manufacturing plant infrastructure, our established production capabilities, and our highly skilled workforce,” said IPL Managing Director and CEO Jeanne Johns.
Preliminary results from the feasibility study are expected to be available at the end of this year.
IPL’s Gibson Island site is currently Australia’s sole urea producer. The plant has capacity to produce 340,000 mt/y of urea, according to Green Markets data. However, IPL has been dogged with gas supply issues to the Gibson Island production site, which also includes ammonia and ammonium sulfate production capacity. The company has some 200,000 mt/y of ammonium sulfate capacity at the site, Green Markets data indicates.
IPL currently has gas supply for the Gibson Island site from Australia Pacific LNG, which started in April 2020 and continues through to the end of December 2022 (GM June 7, 2019). The supply deal replaced a temporary one-year gas contract that expired on Dec. 31, 2019.
The company said that international competitive gas pricing is required to continue operations after the current gas contract expires at the end of December 2022.
IPL’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Incitec Fertilizers Pty Ltd. (IPF), in May inked a 20-year offtake agreement with junior producer Perdaman Chemicals and Fertilisers Pty Ltd. with a commitment to take up to 2.3 million mt/y of granular urea from Perdaman’s proposed urea plant at Karratha on Western Australia’s Burrup Peninsula (GM May 7, p. 1).
But the agreement is subject, among other conditions, to the Perdaman plant being built, and first production is not expected before the first quarter of 2025.
FFI is a unit of Perth-based iron ore major Fortescue Metals Group, and is also already investigating the development of a green ammonia plant at the Bell Bay Industrial Precinct in northern Tasmania (GM Nov. 20, 2020). The company is studying the establishment of green ammonia supply chains between Australia and Japan (GM May 21, p 34).