South Korea firms target large green and blue ammonia plant project in Malaysia

LONDON (ICIS)–Three Korean companies on Wednesday unveiled plans for a 630,000 tonne/year export-oriented green ammonia project in Malaysia that would create up to 600,000 tonnes/year of blue ammonia.

Known as the H2biscus clean hydrogen project, the potential state-of-the-art facility at Sarawak involves Korea’s Lotte Chemical – sibling of major ammonia importer Lotte Fine Chemical (LFC) – and partners including steel major POSCO.

No timeline or investment figure was revealed at the virtual signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for a project that would also generate 460,000 tonnes/year of green methanol.

“All of the clean ammonia and clean methanol, except for 7,000 tonnes of green hydrogen, will be imported to Korea and used by domestic companies,” Lotte Chemical said in a news release, adding Samsung Engineering and Malaysia’s SEDC Energy are involved as well.

“In addition, the three [Korean] companies plan to take the lead in introducing clean hydrogen to Korea by developing overseas clean hydrogen projects in cooperation with major overseas clients.”

The news release noted the Korean trio have already collaborated on green ammonia/hydrogen initiatives as the northeast Asia nation looks to drive take up of zero/low carbon fuels as part of decarbonisation initiatives.