Production of green hydrogen and ammonia from offshore energy

This subject is dedicated to the high potential of offshore wind power in the high seas, where it seems extremely complicated and expensive to install an electric transmission to a continental grid. In addition, the IMO, a United Nation agency that is responsible for environmental impacts of ships, adopted ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from marine shipping. The IMO plan regulates carbon dioxide (CO2 ) emissions from ships and requires shipping companies to halve their GHG emissions by 2050 (compared to 2008 levels). Different ways are being explored in order to identify the best low-carbon fuel that will be able to power new marine propulsion systems without GHC emissions (and others polluants like Sox, Nox…). Hydrogen combined with a fuel cell is a good option for small application (fishing boat…). However, issues associated with hydrogen storage and distribution (low energy density) are currently a barrier for its implementation for large and massive marine application which drivess 80–90% global trade, moving over 10 billion tonnes of containers, solid and liquid bulk cargo across the world’s oceans annually. Hence, other indirect storage media are currently being considered. Of these, ammonia is a carbon free carrier which offers high energy density. First studies and demonstration projects show that it could be used as a fuel coupled with a new generation of high-temperature fuel cells (SOFC) or internal combustion engines. This project focuses on the green ammonia production on a high seas platform including an offshore wind farm that use renewable electricity to first generate hydrogen from water (via electrolysis) and nitrogen from air and then combine both in a Haber-Bosch process to synthesize ammonia. The objective is to develop modeling tools (Modelica / Dymola environment) in order to build, simulate and optimize "wind to ammonia" systems and energy management solutions to minimize the production cost of ammonia.