By STAN MADDUX

Indiana Correspondent

WEST TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — Work has started on a facility to produce what’s billed as “green ammonia” that farmers can purchase at a cheaper price to fertilize their crops and help slow climate change.

Wabash Valley Resources (WVR) is partnering with OGCI Climate Investments on converting a former Duke Energy electric generating station in West Terre Haute, just east of the Illinois state line, under a deal finalized May 20. The plan is to produce anhydrous ammonia (NH3) for local growers while releasing hardly any carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) linked to global warming.

Nalin Gupta, a managing partner associated with New York-based WVR, said the facility will be the first in the world to produce ammonia with a near-zero carbon footprint, if all goes according to plan.

“This will be an interesting challenge. We’ll see how the farm world takes it. We’re excited,” he said.

As much as $500 million in equipment is going into the facility, which could open by June 2022. Construction just recently began. “We’ve started in bits and pieces. It hasn’t been in full swing, but it will soon hopefully toward the end of this year,” Gupta said.

Plans call for capturing up to 1.75 million tons of CO2 from the plant annually and storing the gas about 7,000 feet below the ground. He said the existing coal gasification plant will be fired back up and used to produce hydrogen, which powered the turbines for making electricity.

The hydrogen will now be turned into NH3 in a new facility added on to the existing plant. The CO2 produced from burning coal will be captured and pushed into caverns that can hold “billions and billions” of tons of the gas, he said.

Gupta explained the NH3 used by farmers in the Midwest presently comes from Louisiana and countries including Trinidad, Russia, and China. It costs about $60-$150 a ton to produce, but farmers in the Eastern Corn Belt can pay as much as $400-$500 depending on where the anhydrous comes from, due to transportation costs, he said.

Gupta said ammonia from the new plant should be $100-$150 per ton less than what’s presently shipped to farmers from the Gulf Coast.

Farmers and industrial end users alike will, for the first time, be presented with an opportunity to purchase ammonia produced in an environmentally conscious and sustainable manner and at an affordable price, said Simon Greenshields, president and CEO of Phibro, LLC. WVR is affiliated with Phibro, a Connecticut-based commodities trading firm whose focus includes renewable energy.

Gupta said new markets for growers using the ammonia could also open where environmentally friendly products are in higher demand, in areas like California and Europe. Ethanol from corn fertilized by green ammonia, for example, could be a selling point for Earth-conscious buyers.

He said 125 jobs paying more than $75,000 annually will be created, with many being former workers at the shuttered generating station.

Chris Hurt, an agricultural economist at Purdue University, explained many new technology-driven projects get proposed but never materialize due to high cost of production. The economics in this case was helped from U.S. Department of Energy funding as part of its Carbon Storage Program aimed at developing and advancing technologies for the safe, cost-effective and permanent geologic storage of CO2.

Gupta said also lowering production costs is coal gasification emissions being less expensive to capture, from being rich with CO2.

Wally Tyner, a Purdue energy economist, said capture and storage of CO2 has been for around for a long time. Its practice, though, is limited in areas where it’s become cost-effective. He said belowground storage is also safe because CO2 is not combustible, and the seal provided from the vast amounts of granite, shale, and other bedrock above it.

The only risk would be if somehow the CO2 escaped all at once and represented a higher percentage of the air than oxygen until it dissipated. “The likelihood of that happening is miniscule,” he said.

Tyner also said natural gas, which is combustible, is safely kept in caverns beneath the ground to provide an energy source for the country to draw from through the winter.

According to WVR officials, OGCI Climate Investments is a $1 billion-plus fund created by the CEOs of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative to take practical action on climate change. The fund invests in innovative companies ready for commercial production.

The project was also made possible by a measure adopted by the state legislature in May and later signed by Gov. Eric Holcomb. Senate Enrolled Act 442 allows the operator of the facility to use eminent domain, if necessary, to acquire underground formation and surface rights.

Under that law, the state may retain ownership of the stored CO2 and the formations where it is stored 12 years after the underground storage of the gas began, or fewer than 12 years if the underground CO2 injections stop before then.