Ammonia, a fuel free from carbon emissions when burned, has long tantalized scientists but left them with a dilemma: it’s both toxic and troublesome to handle. In its natural gaseous state, it must be stored at a frigid -33°C to remain liquid, and even then, storage tanks corrode, and a single leak can be deadly.

Yet, such impossible challenges have often led to breakthroughs, and the one that could potentially catapult ammonia into the top tiers of the energy transition is no different. It came from an unlikely corner of Japan’s academia.

In 2023, Japanese chemist Dr. Morishita Masao discovered a compound — borane — that solidifies ammonia at room temperature, sidestepping the perils of handling the gas.

Researchers were startled. Until Morishita’s findings, attempts to store ammonia in solid form largely involved trapping it in metal-organic frameworks, absorbing it into metal hydrides, or converting it into safer compounds like fertilizers. Yet Morishita solidified it in a pure form.

The implications are clear: if ammonia can be stored and transported in solid form, which is much easier and cheaper to handle, energy firms could move it across the globe without specialized cryogenic tanks. For Japan, it opens the tantalizing possibility of tapping into vast clean ammonia production resources overseas and shipping it for domestic use without the need for a new, trillion-yen industry supply chain based on highly specialized equipment.

Still, engineers and business developers in ammonia supply projects have mostly dismissed it. They claim that converting vast amounts of ammonia from solid to liquid or gas form will consume huge amounts of energy, rendering it impractical for large-scale deployment in power plants or industry. 

So, will this discovery live on only in textbooks, or does it have a chance of commercial success? Japan NRG spoke with dozens of industry players to piece together the behind-the-scenes story of this development.