Wade Rupard talking about production of green ammonia.
“It seemed like an elegant concept when we were first looking at it that you could take a wind turbine, and that’s producing energy from wind above a cornfield, or small grain field, and then produce a nutrient that you can use right underneath the wind farms in rural Minnesota,” says Michael Reese, the green ammonia research lead at the University of Minnesota.
For Minnesota, the economic stakes are significant. Farmers in the state spend up to $1 billion annually on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, yet Minnesota has virtually no commercial ammonia production capacity. As a result, fertilizer purchases send substantial amounts of money outside the state each year.
“All that money goes out of the state of Minnesota,” Reese says. “There are no ammonia or nitrogen fertilizer production facilities in the state other than our small systems here.”
Researchers believe green ammonia could eventually help reverse that trend by creating a Minnesota-based fertilizer industry powered by the state’s abundant wind resources.
The concept is simple in theory but difficult in practice.
Reminds me of pumped storage plant. There are some interesting ideas out there to go green.