The French group will be working with KBR, the world leader in ammonia, to ensure low-carbon production using its Autothermal Reforming Process (ATR).

The global ammonia market is booming. It reached nearly $78 billion in 2022 and is expected to exceed $129 billion by 2030. Used as a fertiliser in agriculture, this product will become strategic for the industry. It can easily be transported over long distances and converted back into hydrogen, to help decarbonise industry and mobility.

This is where Air Liquide comes in, having developed the ATR technology. Using oxygen and steam, it produces a hydrogen-rich synthetic gas that can be transformed into ammonia. Combined with carbon capture, the process becomes more virtuous. It has been applied in Japan, for example (you can read our article about it here).

The ammonia molecule is then simply cracked to recover the hydrogen. Air Liquide is actually going to set up such an installation in the port of Antwerp in Belgium. On this site, Air Liquide will convert ammonia on an industrial scale and with an optimised carbon footprint.

As part of its partnership with KBR, Air Liquide claims that up to 99% of CO2 can be recovered from highly integrated industrial plants when combined with carbon capture technology. KBR has 250 ammonia production plants worldwide, generating 10,000 million tonnes per day.

Do you want to learn more about low-carbon ammonia? Then our latest 2 articles on the subject should interest you. You can read them here and there. 

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Article written by Laurent Meillaud and translated by Logan King