Green ammonia project aims to keep fertilizer dollars in Minnesota
A new facility in Morris is testing whether wind-powered fertilizer production can strengthen Minnesota agriculture and rural economies.
Key takeaways:
Minnesota farmers currently spend up to $1 billion annually on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, with nearly all of those agricultural dollars leaving the state.
A pioneering facility in Morris, Minnesota, eliminates fossil fuels from production, shielding local farmers from volatile global markets, supply chain spikes and international conflicts tied to natural gas.
This proving ground could lay the foundation for a network of commercial-scale, green ammonia facilities owned by farmer cooperatives and rural investors — boosting local tax bases, creating jobs and driving demand for home-grown renewable energy.
Beneath the wind turbines that dot western Minnesota’s landscape, a technology is beginning to take shape that could have major implications for the state’s economy, agriculture sector and energy future.
At the University of Minnesota’s West Central Research and Outreach Center (WCROC) in Morris, a next-generation green ammonia facility has begun its first season of production. The plant is scaling toward a target of producing approximately one metric ton of zero-carbon ammonia per day, creating fertilizer using Minnesota wind energy, water and air rather than fossil fuels.
The project, a partnership of the University of Minnesota, RTI International and engineering firm Casale, represents a significant step beyond an earlier demonstration system built in 2013. Researchers view the facility as a proving ground for a technology that could eventually support large-scale fertilizer production across Minnesota while keeping more agricultural dollars circulating within the state.
“It seemed like an elegant concept when we were first looking at it that you could take a wind turbine, and that's producing energy from wind above a cornfield, or small grain field, and then produce a nutrient that you can use right underneath the wind farms in rural Minnesota,” says Michael Reese, the green ammonia research lead at the University of Minnesota.
For Minnesota, the economic stakes are significant. Farmers in the state spend up to $1 billion annually on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, yet Minnesota has virtually no commercial ammonia production capacity. As a result, fertilizer purchases send substantial amounts of money outside the state each year.
“All that money goes out of the state of Minnesota,” Reese says. “There are no ammonia or nitrogen fertilizer production facilities in the state other than our small systems here.”
Researchers believe green ammonia could eventually help reverse that trend by creating a Minnesota-based fertilizer industry powered by the state’s abundant wind resources.
Refining the technology
The concept is simple in theory but difficult in practice. Traditional ammonia production relies on natural gas and operates continuously at steady production rates. Renewable energy sources, however, fluctuate throughout the day.
To address that challenge, Reese partnered with University of Minnesota chemical engineering professor Prodromos Daoutidis. Over nearly a decade, Daoutidis and his research team developed modeling and control systems that allow the plant to operate dynamically as wind conditions change.
“Essentially, the wind or the sun is our feedstock,” Daoutidis says. “We typically design a chemical plant to run at steady state and produce at a constant rate, assuming that we have a constant supply of our feedstock. That's not the case with green chemicals or green ammonia specifically.”
Instead of relying on expensive energy storage systems, the Morris facility is designed to ramp production up and down as renewable power availability changes.
“In order to somehow absorb the fluctuations in wind availability, you need to have a significant storage of hydrogen to be able to absorb these fluctuations, which is very costly,” Daoutidis says. “On the other hand, if you allow the plant to operate dynamically, you minimize the demand for storing hydrogen or storing power and hence, you can have a much tighter design, a much, much more economical design.”
The result is a new model for chemical manufacturing that could be particularly valuable in rural Minnesota, where wind generation has expanded rapidly over the last two decades.
Significant environmental — and economic — benefits
The environmental benefits are substantial. Ammonia production is among the most carbon-intensive industrial processes in the world, accounting for roughly 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The Morris facility eliminates fossil fuels from the process. On-site electrolyzers split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is then combined with nitrogen separated from ambient air to produce ammonia. While the plant still relies on the century-old Haber-Bosch process, the ability to operate under changing renewable energy conditions is the innovation researchers hope to commercialize.
But for Minnesota, the biggest opportunity may be economic rather than environmental.
Reese argues that localized fertilizer production could help protect farmers from volatile global fertilizer markets that are heavily influenced by natural gas prices, supply chain disruptions and international conflicts such as the ongoing conflict with Iran, which has significantly impacted the global fertilizer market.
“This is kind of a hedge if you're able to produce it locally,” Reese says. “If you can produce a moderately priced nitrogen fertilizer that's consistent, year in and year out, then farmers can budget for it, and they can market crops to that point in time.”
The Morris facility already demonstrates how a localized system could work. Ammonia produced at the site is stored on location and transferred into nurse tanks that supply local growers through the Morris Co-op.
“So it will go out on farmers’ fields,” Reese says.
A fertile future
Daoutidis believes the long-term impact could extend well beyond fertilizer sales.
“It's about the economic development of the state,” Daoutidis says. “This is huge.”
He envisions a future in which farmer cooperatives and rural investors build and operate commercial-scale green ammonia facilities throughout Minnesota, creating jobs, expanding local tax bases and generating additional demand for renewable energy produced in Greater Minnesota.
“If you look at the farmers, they are part of the market. And in a way, they have to be part of the solution,” Daoutidis says. “One can see a model of co-ops that will come together and hopefully develop these plants with support and loans and credits from the state.”
Researchers estimate that green ammonia could reduce the fossil energy footprint of farming by as much as 90 percent. Lower carbon intensity scores could create additional value for Minnesota farmers by improving access to emerging low-carbon fuel markets and tax incentives.
The benefits could also spread across multiple Minnesota industries.
Reese notes that green ammonia can be combined with carbon dioxide streams from the state’s ethanol plants to produce urea, the most widely used nitrogen fertilizer in Minnesota. Because urea is easier to transport and store than liquid ammonia, local production could further strengthen regional fertilizer supply chains.
Beyond agriculture, green ammonia may help support future development of green iron, green steel and sustainable aviation fuel.
Minnesota already possesses many of the raw materials needed for those industries. The state ranks among the nation’s leading producers of wind energy and supplies roughly 80 percent of the iron ore mined in the United States. Yet much of that ore is shipped elsewhere for processing.
“If we can switch the product that we have from conventional ammonia to greener sources of ammonia, other sources of nitrogen fertilizer, that opens up the door for green iron, green steel and sustainable aviation fuel,” Reese says. “So we have an opportunity here in Minnesota to have the same model to take these natural resources that we have in wind and solar and other things, and use that to transform the industries — agriculture, and mining, and transportation fuels, as well as the utility industry.”
Daoutidis also sees broader opportunities for ammonia as an energy carrier. Because ammonia is easier to store and transport than hydrogen, it could eventually be used to move renewable energy across regions and support new energy applications that are difficult to electrify directly.
For now, however, the focus remains on proving the technology at Morris.
Researchers are bringing equipment online gradually and preparing the facility for full-scale pilot operations. The plant serves as a critical bridge between small research demonstrations and future commercial projects that could be built throughout Minnesota.
“It's an exciting, slow, gradual process,” Reese says. “This plant is kind of a key step in going from a field test up to commercial scale... validating the technology and letting people come and kick the tires.”
If successful, the project could demonstrate that Minnesota’s wind resources can do more than generate electricity. They could become the foundation for a new manufacturing sector that keeps fertilizer dollars in-state, strengthens rural economies and creates new value from some of Minnesota’s most abundant natural resources.
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