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By Becky Beyers
If there’s one thing western Minnesota has plenty of, it’s wind.
A plan to create the world’s only wind-to-hydrogen-to-ammonia system could take significant steps later this year, says Mike Reese, renewable-energy director at the West Central Research and Outreach Center in Morris.
Since 2005, the center has been home to a 1.65-megawatt wind turbine that currently provides more than half the electricity to the nearby University of Minnesota-Morris campus. But scientists at the WCROC think there’s more to be done with all that wind. A companion facility to the wind turbine, expected to be up and running by the end of this year, will convert wind into hydrogen that can be used to create storable electricity. The hydrogen also will be combined with nitrogen separated from air to produce nitrogen fertilizer.
“The idea is that since wind is a variable resource, turning it into hydrogen might be a way to store it for a consistent source of power,” Reese says. Once researchers determine whether the process works on a large scale, questions of economic and energy efficiencies will be addressed.
If all goes according to plan, construction will begin in June. The project hit a snag late last year when a local company that had partnered with the WCROC to design and build the system had to bow out, but new partners have been found and things are again moving forward.
In the second part of the project, scientists will study how wind could make hydrogen and in turn, how the hydrogen could be used to make anhydrous ammonia used in fertilizer. Because anhydrous ammonia is derived from natural gas, fertilizer prices go up and down with the volatile natural gas market, creating economic hardship for farmers.
While right now natural gas prices are down—leading to lower fertilizer costs—there’s no guarantee that won’t change, Reese says. “A lot of how this works out economically will depend on the price of natural gas. The United States Energy Information Agency has projected that natural gas will continue to rise in price over the next 20 years; over and above the equivalent cost of electrical energy.”
Making the project a commercial venture also may depend on creating some economic incentives for those who adopt it, he adds. “In any emerging industry, it takes incentives as well as changes in the infrastructure. When we made the transition from horse-and-carriage to cars, there had to be a shift. We’re going to see that same kind of change in energy production.”
While the technology might not work on an individual farm scale, it might be viable at a county- or region-wide scale. Eventually, farmers might work together in a cooperative arrangement to buy the equipment and use it to make their own fertilizer.
“It’s amazing how much interest there is in this project from both the agricultural and wind-energy communities,” Reese says. “We need to take control of our own destiny and develop the technology that will allow us to keep money in our rural areas.”
