Japan’s largest power generation company, JERA Co. Inc., and IHI Corp. have received notice of acceptance of their joint grant application to conduct a demonstration project aimed at establishing ammonia co-firing technology by co-firing coal and ammonia at a large-scale commercial coal-fired power plant.
The demonstration project will also evaluate both boiler heat absorption and environmental impact characteristics such as exhaust gases, and will run for approximately four years, from June 2021 to March 2025, JERA said on May 24.
In the project, JERA and IHI plan to demonstrate an ammonia co-firing rate of 20 percent at Unit 4 of JERA’s Hekinan Thermal Power Station (power generation capacity: 1GW) in FY 2024.
JERA is in charge of ammonia procurement and construction of related facilities such as the storage tank and vaporizer, while IHI’s role is to develop the burners to be used in the demonstration. The two companies are moving forward with design and construction.
According to JERA, this is the world’s first demonstration project in which a large amount of ammonia will be co-fired in a large-scale commercial coal-fired power plant.
The grant has been provided under Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization’s “Development of Technologies for Carbon Recycling and Next-Generation Thermal Power Generation/Research, Development, and Demonstration of Technologies for Ammonia Co-Firing Thermal Power Generation” program.
JERA earlier this month signed a MOU with Yara International ASA, Oslo, to collaborate on the production, delivery, and supply chain development for blue and green ammonia to enable zero-emission thermal power generation in Japan (GM May 14, p. 1).