Amogy, a renewable energy startup in the United States and a pioneer of emission-free, energy-dense ammonia power systems, announces the successful testing of the world’s first ammonia-powered, zero-emission semi-truck.
After eight minutes of filling with Amogy’s ammonia-to-fuel technology, the semi-truck had 900 kilowatt-hours of net electric energy.
The Amogy team will conduct full-scale testing on a test track later this month to demonstrate the truck’s performance under various real-world operating situations.
This latest successful presentation demonstrates that ammonia is a feasible, long-term solution for the otherwise difficult-to-reduce heavy-duty trucking industry, which account for 23% of overall greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. Decarbonizing heavy-duty trucks have been difficult since options such as battery power lack the energy density required to replace diesel for larger vehicles and long-distance routes with minimal downtime.
The ammonia-to-power system by Amogy can help the industry migrate away from diesel-powered engines and toward alternate fuel-to-power technologies. Amogy’s proprietary technology allows the onboard cracking of ammonia into hydrogen, which is then fed directly into a fuel cell to power the vehicle.
Because liquid ammonia has a higher energy density than compressed hydrogen and takes less energy to store and transport, it is less expensive to store and transport.
Because of existing transportation and storage infrastructure, ammonia provides a clear path to a zero-carbon fuel value chain across all heavy-duty transportation sectors. In addition, ammonia is already a worldwide industry, with 200 million tons manufactured and transported each year, making it a suitable and accessible alternative fuel.
“This achievement not only showcases Amogy’s technology as an accessible and scalable solution for trucking, but it also highlights the capabilities and dedication of our outstanding team. First, it was an ammonia-powered drone, then a tractor, and now a truck. In the near future, we look forward to further scaling and tackling other hard-to-abate sectors, such as global shipping,” said Seonghoon Woo, Chief Executive Officer at Amogy.
Amogy is making significant progress toward its target of lowering more than 5 billion metric tons of CO2-eq emissions by 2040, with multiple successful technological demonstrations completed and a dual presence in the United States and Europe.