The Business Times – Not too early to plan for response to spills of low-carbon alternative fuels

First featured on The Business Times

An emergency response plan tailored to ammonia spills is needed before the substance can be deployed as a marine fuel

The recent 400-tonne oil spill off the southern coast of Singapore is a sobering reminder that despite precautionary measures, rigorous crew training and exhaustive operational checklists, accidents can still happen.

A well-established emergency response plan (ERP) can, however, eliminate chaos in the immediate aftermath. If crew, operators, port authorities and first responders are trained and familiar with their roles, response times can be minimised.

That the Maritime & Port Authority of Singapore responded within 11 minutes of the oil spill is a testament to its level of preparedness.

In the ensuing days, we witnessed the activation of multiple agencies – including the National Environment Agency, PUB, National Parks Board, Singapore Food Agency and Sentosa Development Corporation – with each playing individual yet closely coordinated roles in containing the oil spill.

Concerns over future spills

As the industry prepares to deploy low-carbon alternative fuels to decarbonise shipping, it is equally important that we establish safe operations and appropriate emergency response procedures to minimise the environmental and health impacts of spills, and any accidental releases of these new fuels.

Ammonia is one of the alternative fuels in use. Of chief concern is its toxicity. A thorough understanding of ammonia’s properties is hence crucial for developing a credible risk mitigation strategy.

Thirty minutes of exposure to ammonia with a concentration of 1,600 parts per million can be lethal. Ammonia also forms ammonium hydroxide upon contact with water, and this can be corrosive. An accidental release of ammonia therefore poses challenges that are very different from those caused by an oil spill.

Ammonia readily dissolves in seawater, rendering ineffective the booms and containment equipment used to contain the oil spill in the recent Singapore incident.

When airborne, ammonia vaporises to form a dense and visible cloud that can pose immediate and significant health risks to those aboard vessels and in nearby communities.

While preventative measures – such as emergency shutdown valves, double-walled pipes, air-locked spaces and specialised personal protective equipment and gear – are essential to ensure safe handling of ammonia, an ERP tailored to ammonia spills is absolutely needed before it can be deployed as a marine fuel.

Developing a plan for ammonia spills

It is with this need in mind that the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD) has been working closely with its industry partners to draft such a plan.

This effort builds on GCMD’s safety study on ammonia bunkering. Published last year, the study identifies 400 operational and locational risks for bunkering ammonia in Singapore waters that can – and should – be mitigated to levels as low as reasonably practicable.

Using ammonia as a marine fuel is a new use case. In the absence of precedents, existing ERPs for oil and chemical spills provide a valuable starting point.

These plans provide a foundational framework, particularly in areas such as tiered response levels based on the severity of spills and, accordingly, resource needs and multi-agency coordination protocols.

Even with much to build on, however, gaps that specifically address ammonia’s hazards and toxicity will need to be identified and addressed.

GCMD’s planned ammonia transfer pilots at anchorage in key ports serve to bridge some of these gaps. The operationalisation and execution of these pilots will provide additional learnings to help refine procedures in response to ammonia spills and releases.

Leveraging stakeholder expertise

The road to clean future fuels may seem daunting. Yet, synthetic ammonia has been used in fertilisers for more than a century – since Fritz Haber figured out its high-pressure synthesis and Carl Bosch developed an industrial process to scale its production.

Today, farmers in North America apply ammonia directly to crops with few safety incidents. Ammonia is commonly circulated in closed loops as refrigerants in food processing and cold storage facilities.

The oil spill incident has understandably raised questions surrounding the safe usage of ammonia as a marine fuel. While every incident is one too many, they offer crucial live learnings to identify root causes and implement robust corrective measures to further mitigate risks.

Doing so requires leveraging the expertise of all stakeholders across the ammonia value chain and those in adjacent sectors possessing experience in handling hazardous materials.

GCMD therefore invites stakeholders with the relevant experience to come forward and help shape the narrative to enable ammonia as a marine fuel.