Decarbonised farming

Moving towards net zero with ammonia gas fertiliser

Project Funder: Clean Green Ag, Norman Industries Ag
Project Lead: FarmLink
Project Duration: 2023-2025
Project Location: Temora Agricultural Innovation Centre

Anhydrous ammonia as a fertiliser source is not new but a low GHG emission production method is new. This innovation at the manufacturing level has resulted in a green ammonia product that has the potential to reduce on-farm greenhouse gas emissions and move farms closer to net zero.

Conventional or brown ammonia is made using fossil fuels (typically natural gas) as the feedstock. However, green ammonia does not rely on fossil fuels and instead uses renewable energy sources, and air and water to produce ammonia. This means the greenhouse gas footprint is much lower than that of brown ammonia.

Nitrogen fertilisers are the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions on farms and this project will show the potential of green ammonia to reduce these fertiliser-derived emissions.

Background

The Norman family run a 2000ha mixed farming operation and have been using anhydrous ammonia for 20+ years. Over this time, they have modified their seeder to enable the safe application of ammonia under different crop types at sowing. This project will draw on their first-hand experience and utilise their modified seeder to sow the farm at TAIC and importantly, 2 large scale replicated trials.

Over a three year period, we will sow 2 large paddock scale replicated trials in wheat, and canola, with a range of differing ammonia and urea rates. These trials will aim to answer 3 key questions:

1. How much will our greenhouse gas emissions be reduced by using green ammonia?

The higher the ammonia rates, the more we will offset the requirement for in-crop urea and therefore allow a larger proportion of our total applied N to come from green ammonia. This will then provide a significant greenhouse gas reduction benefit.

2. However, how high a rate is too high?

There is a risk that high rates of ammonia could cause seedling death and we aim to show at what rate this becomes a significant risk.

3. Nitrogen losses and efficiency.

We will test whether different nitrogen fertilisers, either ammonia or urea result in varying nitrogen losses or grain yields.