January 30, 2022 [Yahoo!] – Japan’s IHI Corp has started studies on possible conversion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving and storage terminals located close to gas-fired power plants into ammonia-based facilities, it said on Wednesday.

IHI will look at possibility to modify LNG terminals in the second half of this decade, as it wants to use ammonia – a carbon-neutral fuel – for boilers and gas turbines, it said.

Last week, IHI agreed with General Electric’s turbine manufacturing unit to develop gas turbines operating on ammonia to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Tokyo hopes to use ammonia to gradually replace coal and develop a fully ammonia-fired power plant by 2050 but its reliance on coal and gas for power generation has grown since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, which left its nuclear power industry in crisis.

In 2021, Japan’s biggest power generator JERA and IHI began to use small volumes of ammonia along with coal at JERA’s Hekinan coal-fired power station in central Japan as part of a demonstration project to reduce the facility’s emissions of CO2.

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