The race against time to develop an ammonia-powered engine is on

The technology group Wärtsilä believes it will have the industry’s first engine running on ammonia already this year, according to Juha Kytölä, Director of R&D and Engineering at Wärtsilä.

“This year we will demonstrate an engine running on ammonia. The demonstration will start with a 40-percent ammonia blend,“ he said while speaking at a recent decarbonization webinar hosted by Wärtsilä.

“We will rapidly scale up our tests, continuing well into 2022.“

Testing of the four-stroke engine is being planned and implemented in Vaasa, Finland and has been described as the first of its kind in the history of the maritime industry.

The project is being implemented in cooperation with Knutsen OAS Shipping AS and Repsol, as well as with the Sustainable Energy Catapult Centre. It is supported by a NOK 20 million grant from the Norwegian Research Council through the DEMO 2000 programme.

“We are the first ones to start operating a marine engine with ammonia as a fuel. We are using the combustion technology that we have already developed and applying those solutions to ammonia, working from a high level of maturity of the engine. We are also working with the classification societies to develop the safety concepts,“ Kytölä said.

The industry major is not planning to introduce this fuel to the markets just yet but hopes to have the technology ready to launch the first pilot installation in the coming years.

Even though Wärtsilä claims to be the first one in the industry to achieve this milestone, it is not the only one looking at developing an ammonia-powered engine.

German engine manufacturer MAN Energy Solutions is also working toward developing an ammonia-powered engine in the next three years. Namely, the company is confident it will develop a marine engine running on ammonia by 2024.

“We will make an ammonia-engine, one way or the other, that’s for sure,” Kjeld Aabo, Director of New Technology for two-stroke promotion at MAN Energy Solutions, confirmed in an interview with Offshore Energy – Green Marine.

“It may be the fourth quarter of 2024, but that’s still our target and we do believe we can do that.”

The two-stroke engine being developed builds on the MAN B&W Dual-Fuel ME-LGIP Engine platform, which uses liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).

MAN is poised to take one of its big two-stroke test engines through its paces in the beginning of 2022 at the Research Center in Copenhagen.

Ammonia is emerging as one of the most promising fuels for marine applications being a carbon-free fuel.

As a zero-carbon fuel, ammonia can be produced by combining water, air, and renewable energy, which is commonly referred to as green ammonia.

It can also be generated from gas feedstock with carbon capture and storage technology, generating what is known as blue ammonia.

There are several challenges that need to be considered when discussing ammonia as potential fuel of the future, including its low volumetric energy density, high toxicity as well as a higher price.

In practice this means that a ship running on ammonia would need larger fuel tanks or would have to opt for more frequent bunkering.

Also, when introducing ammonia on board vessels numerous safety considerations and protocols will have to be implemented in order to avoid potential releases of ammonia on board and prevent intoxication of the crew.

Finally, the production of green ammonia is yet to be ramped up since all the ammonia available at the moment is being produced from fossil fuels.

With the scaling up of ammonia production facilities and infrastructure coupled with a rise in demand in the upcoming period, ammonia is expected to be more widely available at a more competitive price.