At the Landus AcreEdge Fertilizer Facility in Boone, Tracy Keyes pointed to shipping containers behind a fence.
“The Talus plant is made up of five core systems,” she said. “Our two most important containers, I would say, is our hydrogen unit and our ammonia generation unit.”
Keyes is an engineer with Talusag. The company partnered with Landus Cooperative to produce what they say is North America’s first commercial-scale “green ammonia.”
Talus CEO Hiro Iwanaga said the fertilizer is chemically identical to conventional ammonia, but the process to make it is very different.
“Traditional ammonia depends on a global supply chain that's costly, that's unreliable, that's carbon intensive,” Iwanaga said during a news conference Wednesday. “We manufacture closer to where the product is used. We cut down risk while giving farmers a stable, more predictable source of one of the most critical inputs.”
Ammonia fertilizer is typically produced by stripping hydrogen from natural gas and combining it with nitrogen. This Haber-Bosch process is energy intensive and largely reliant on fossil fuels. Each metric ton of “brown ammonia” produced releases nearly 2 tons of greenhouse gas.
In contrast, the green ammonia system in Boone pulls hydrogen from water instead of natural gas. It’s powered by on-site solar panels and uses a closed loop cooling water system to be more energy efficient.
The demonstration plant has been operational since February and can produce about 1 metric ton of ammonia per day. Earlier this month, Landus applied the fertilizer to cornfield trial plots to collect data throughout the growing season and compare results with control strips.
The partners said a larger system being built in Eagle Grove is 75% complete and will produce roughly 20 metric tons per day. They expect to have green ammonia commercially available to farmers next year.
Brian Crowe, vice president of strategic initiatives at Landus, said this new approach will help keep fertilizer prices affordable and stable. Conventional ammonia fertilizer prices fluctuate substantially with the global supply and price of fossil fuels, especially natural gas.
“Farmers have paid up to $1,500 for anhydrous ammonia in recent times, and they've also paid as little as $330 in recent years,” Crowe said. “It’s a huge margin to have to plan for and to figure out in your year-over-year operation.”
Iwanaga added that manufacturing green ammonia with small-scale systems brings high value production back to rural communities and creates jobs.
“What we're doing here at Boone, it can be replicated almost anywhere across the Corn Belt,” Iwanaga said.
The Clean Hydrogen Production Tax Credit created during the Biden administration has played a role in green ammonia development in the U.S. Total energy consumption, fossil fuel energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, air pollutant emissions and water consumption are part of the calculation to determine whether a facility qualifies.
Iwanaga said Talusag plans to expand to more sites after the Eagle Grove facility is operational.
