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sorry for the broken link, here it is.
the point is that NH3 is also a clean (carbon-free) liquid fuel that can be readily used in various types of combustion engines. it has been done before (during the 1930s), extensively studied by the US army (involved people from UC Berkeley, GM and many other engine, vehicle and aviation companies) between 1960s and 70s and is being done right now by a small but steadily growing group of people.
The main problem with using ammonia for a fuel, particularly if done on a wide-scale basis, is that the combustion of ammonia produces various oxides of nitrogen (the exact type depending on specific combustion conditions). Nitrogen oxides (generally referred to as 'NOx') are a serious air pollutant, a major contributor to photochemical smog, and are now highly regulated, particularly in areas with poor air quality such as the Los Angeles
basin. The US auto industry has had to spend billions of dollars changing the designs of its internal combustion engines to reduce the amount of NOx formed as a natural part of high-temperature transient combustion conditions.
As a retired environmental engineer, there is no way that I can conceive of that the federal EPA and state environmental agencies would ever allow the widespread use of ammonia as a fuel. In fact, one of the concerns about using animal wastes as supplemental fuel is that it contains lots of ammonia and other nitrogenous compounds and thus produces high levels of NOx when burned.
Yes, I am aware that some rocket fuels contain nitrogen compounds, but the DOD and NASA have always had a sort of 'special dispensation' when it comes to certain evironmental regulations.
such concern may be unsubstantiated. rather to the contrary, if you read the various studies carried out in the 1960s and 70s by folks in UC Berkeley and GM, etc., ammonia combustion should produce far less NOx than produced by the combustion of hydrocarbons mainly because the peak temperature is lower in the ammonia fueled engines. another point is that the "state-of-art" method used by some high-end car makers in reducing NOx emission is to use urea - basically ammonia - to absorb the NOx. combustion of ammonia is never known to produce any NxO.
If your combustion temperature is lower, then you energy efficiency is lower, because that is the way the way engines work (thermodynamics). High engine efficiencies require high operating temperatures.
Without saying outright that NH3 is bogus, your respondants here are pointing out that there are a LOT of issues you have to address before this form of energy storage becomes credible.
are high peak temperature and efficiency of thermal-mechanical energy conversion so simply related? no matter how high the peak temperature goes, if the combustion is not ignited at the right moment due to self ignition or avoidance of knocking - as most of the gasoline engines do - the efficiency can remain very low.
no matter one doubts it or not, the fact remains that ammonia fueled cars, trucks, buses operated in Europe during WWII and that the fastest airplane ever existed was fueled by ammonia. to scientifically minded readers, there is a considerable body of work from the extensive investigations into the ammonia fuel applications performed between 1960s to 1980s funded by US army. one only needs to find and read them.
"Are high peak temperature and efficiency of thermal-mechanical energy conversion so simply related?"
Yes.
High temperature does not, of course, guarantee effficiency, only the converse: high efficiency is not possible without it. This is a basic law of thermodynamics: Look up the Carnot cycle and you should find a coherent explanation. The key point is that efficiency is constrained by the difference between burning temperature and exhaust gas temperature, and the greater the difference, the greater the possible efficiency. That said, this is indeed the reason engine manufacturers have always sought high compression ratios (and why high-octane gasoline, which burns hotter without exploding to make a knock is preferable to low-octane gasoline), and why diesel engines are inherently more efficient than gasoline engines.
Since I posted before, it has been posted that the amonia fueled-engines DO have high burn temperatures. This is good for efficiency, but brings us back to the problem of NOx in the exhaust gas. These gasses are poisonous and produce smog, and are an unavoidable consequence of high temperature burning. In defense of ammonia, let it be admitted that most of the nitrogen being turned into NOx will come from the atmosphere (which is 4/5 N2 to 1/5 O2) but the ammmonia itself will be adding a share, which hydrocarbons and alcohols do not.
Ammonia is highly, highly poisonous, so avoiding accidents is really important.
In modern industrial society ammonia is created using hydrocarbons to provide heat for the manufacture process. I don't think their is enough natural ammonia around to divert it from its vital role in food production and waste it as fuel.
... but only applies to heat engines. Electrochemical devices (batteries, fuel cells) have different constraints.
The problem with ammonia is that the nitrogen is a direct participant in the chemical reaction, so you're going to have atomic nitrogen up against oxygen radicals.
In NH3's defense, ammonia is also the preferred hydrogen source for NOx reduction catalysts. If you are fueling with ammonia, you won't have to worry about refilling an AdBlue tank.
Electrochemistry was mentioned as a possibility for production of ammonia--not, in this thread, for utilization. That would be an ammonia-powered fuel cell. If somebody invents one, that is a whole new subject.
So far, we have been talking about burning it in an internal combustion engine. The laws of thermodynamics apply. There is no way around this.
You said "high efficiency is not possible without it [high temperature]". I was just pointing out one of Nature's loopholes. And if the electrochemical ammonia production cell is reversible, it makes ammonia a far more useful fuel than it is with today's technology.
You will excuse me if I insist that I not be taken out of context.
"Are high peak temperature and efficiency of thermal-mechanical energy conversion so simply related?"
There is no ambiguity here: What do you think thermal-mechanical means, anyway?
And yes, maximum possible efficiency in an engine and difference between burn temperature and exhaust temperature are that simply related.
No, there are no loop-holes. Nature is not conned.
You deceive yourself to think otherwise.
When someone invents an ammonia fuel-cell, THEN we can talk about its pros and cons. If you are thinking of inventing one yourself, keep in mind that, your first constraint will be the electro-chemisty that makes a fuel-cell work. But from the standpoint of ease of storage and safety, ammonia lacks virtues.
Well, relative to hydrogen, ammonia is very easy to store. However, it shares many of the disadvantages of hydrogen including its low throughput efficiency if made from electricity.
Compared to hydrogen--you have agreement there! Hydrogen is so difficult to work with I often wonder why we are even discussing it. A very high-tech and unforgiving solution that I cannot believe will ever work.
Hydrogen comes up because the proponents of ammonia as fuel claim (rightly) that it stores more hydrogen per volume than liquid hydrogen and only requires cheap tankage. From this they conclude (wrongly) that it's a panacea.
it is a wrongly concluded statement that from this (storage advantage alone) they (the ammonia fuel advocates) concluded that it's a panacea (rather, it's considered a more practical, more immediate and more sustainable solution for both PO and ACC without the need to completely replace the existing infrastructure and equipment). any open minded reader can reach his or her own conclusion by looking into here.
Those reports have all the same flaws of the hydrogen advocacy: they ignore two critical facts:
We buy horribly expensive batteries for those applications where portability is key, but you'd never think of running your house lights on D cells. Neither are we going to build an ammonia-fuel infrastructure when Firefly Energy's lead-acid technology is good enough for the next 10 years and we can forego both the infrastructure costs and the conversion losses involved with chemical fuels of any kind.
Ironically, the Iowa State slideshow I linked shows why the near-term future will go to the PHEV. There's about 8 quads of energy in a typical corn crop (somewhat less than half of this in the cobs and stover). This pre-existing chemical energy will supply the chemical fuel required by PHEVs; the electricity produced from RE will supply the other 80% of the energy they need. There is no need to convert from electricity to chemical fuel and back, and the only way such a system can get going is with massive subsidies.
Considered by whom? Its partisans? Let's see, what new infrastructure would be required for RE-generated ammonia to replace petroleum motor fuel?
What new infrastructure is required for PHEVs? Roughly nothing, until they get well past 50% of the fleet; they leverage the existing electric infrastructure and add value to it in ways that ammonia never could.
You can be ignorant and think of ammonia as a serious possibility to replace petroleum motor fuels. But once you're knowledgable, that excuse is gone.
the "Those" and "they" are, again, wrongly concluded. people working on various aspects and scenarios of ammonia fuel applications are not organized. they have diverse motives and points of view. the link you provided reflects only one point of view. any one read through all the presentations (only then the conclusive "they" can be applied to the people who have expressed their opinions there) should be able to find the alleged ignorance unfounded.
no one disputes that "electricity used directly is far more efficient and attractive". the question is whether that is practical for all the applications of concern.
at least by some of the people advocating ammonia as fuel.
people advocate alternative fuels, ammonia among them, for different applications with different concerns - to some, satisfying the desire of continuing happy motoring and averting the possible accidental injury of some motorists due to fuel leakage may be of top concern; to others, avoiding the disruption in food production/distribution and preventing the almost certained death of many people due to starvation caused by such disruption are of paramount importance.
even if one assumes there is a straight electric powertrain that can outperform the ammonia powertrain in all prime movers, let alone ships and planes, by a factor of 3 to 6 in efficiency thus needs only 1/3 or 1/6 as much RE generation, it does not directly lead to the conclusion of only that much of RE generation capacity or infrastructure is needed. the amount of RE generation infrastructure needed has much to do with where they will be deployed. the difference, as can be easily seen on a global wind resource map, between some large areas on ocean and most areas on land can be more than 4 to 8 times in terms of W/m2.
that compare to the production of other means for energy storage unless the prime movers are grid-connected all the time.
you perhaps agree the existing ones are usable.
they can be underground or aboveground, pressurized or unpressurized. yes, new ones will need to be build.
can and should one reach such conclusion simply by drawing a parallel between a past experience during a resource-unconstrained era and one that is to take place in a resource-constrained future? besides, some, if not most, prime movers are already equipped with engines with high compression ratios.
why is that ammonia fuel needs an "entire new vehicle fleet" while PHEV needs "Roughly nothing"? does it also imply that the current FF power stations should just go on BAU?
the serious possibility to replace petroleum motor fuels with ammonia was practiced and confirmed in countries suffered the shortage of petroleum motor fuels during WWII. the consequence of being ignorant of this possibility and being unprepared for using it in a shortage of petroleum motor fuels could be very serious indeed.
should one jump to the conclusion that the combustion of NH3 will inevitably produce more NOx than that of hydrocarbon just because NH3 contains N? the answer from many careful studies is not. please read the article mentioned by Chris in his reply.
is ammonia poisonous? according to this expert (the number 3 presenter) it is Non-toxic: inhalation hazard only. one could also get frostbite if liquid ammonia comes to the direct contact with the body, of course, but yet again, that is not a toxic reaction.
it is the concern of the sustainability of this "modern industrial society" brought us here, isn't it? ammonia doesn't have to and should not come from hydrocarbons - as these resources are too precious (by the way, the main purpose of using hydrocarbons in making ammonia is not for the heat they produce but to get the H) - ammonia can be synthesized with just the renewable energy plus water (no need to be clean, fresh water as that is a scarce resource itself - on the other hand, combustion of ammonia will produce clean, potable water in return) and air. now comes to the question: is the current way of using ammonia as fertilizer sustainable? hasn't it caused severe environmental (especially in water ways and oceans by the run-offs) damage and soil organic degradation already? would it be better to use ammonia as fertilizer and the crop or other organic materials so produced as feedstock of biofuels or to use the organic materials as organic fertilizers and ammonia as a carbon-free fuel as suggested in here?
Inhalation hazard only. Sure. But that is the whole problem: You breathe it and it kills you.
In the accidents cited above, the survivors were just lucky. Not safe at all.
sounds like one whiff, you are dead kind of poison gas. but it is not. it is hazardous with prolonged exposure at and beyond certain level of concentration. in that category, one can enlist CO, CO2 and hydrocarbon such as CH4 and on and on - too many to list individually. one unique feature of ammonia is that it can be detected by human nose at an extremely low level of concentration. gaseous ammonia is also lighter than air at normal temperature. thus unless one is trapped in a closed environment with considerable amount of ammonia, the probability of fatality caused by ammonia should be lower than that long list of not so scary sounding and less odorous gases.
there is much danger in the easy way of life.
Ammonia smelling salts are still used to revive individuals who have fainted. BTW breathing Dihydrogen Monoxide can be fatal too, right? Ok, I not trying to make light of the potential hazards but as far as hazards go it's probably safest to avoid crashes in the first place.
John Holbrook sent me some papers on ammonia turbines yesterday. Thanks, NH3 for the introduction. The achieved temperatures were the same as for fossil fuels. The rate of fuel consumption was 2.4 time higher than for diesel and the power output about 10% higher.
I recall about 5 years ago many people insisting that jet fuel could not melt steel. The achievable temperature is not limited to the temperature at which a fuel burns in open air. Burning in heated air raises the temperature higher. One of the interesting things about ammonia is that the autoignition temperature is about 1200 F, rather higher than for gasoline (495 F) and higher that for hydrogen (1060 F), so compression ratios could be increased quite a bit using ammonia. The heat release per unit mass of stochiometric air is about 8% higher than for propane. Here, I'm citing Faehn, Bull and Shekleton (1966) Society of Automotive Engineers publication 660769.
It seems to me that the number of emissions to control with ammonia are fewer than for carbon based fuels and so catalytic converter design would be simpler. High power applications where fuel tank safety is not an issue owing to low travel speeds such as tractors or construction equipment would be a good place to introduce this kind of thing. If you are not trying to dual fuel a tank, then turbines with larger combustors seem like they could replace some of our peak demand electric supply presently provided by natural gas powered turbines.
It is worth remembering that 1 person died and many people were injured in Minot, ND in 2002, 14 people were injured in 1979 in Cestview, FL and two people died and 46 people were injured in 1977 in Pensacola, Fl as a result of ammonia spills in train accidents. Widespread use as a transportation fuel could have safety drawbacks. But applications in energy storage or use close to the point of manufacture could make sense.
Chris
you are welcome and thanks for the more detailed account.
ammonia fueled power stations can provide not only electricity but also potable water which in some places around the world could soon become a critical problem.
in short, ammonia could be applied relatively quickly to ease the shock that be brought by PO and ACC and to help the world to unwind a bit less painfully. it is a choice out of no better choice.
ammonia is one of the most commonly shipped chemicals by tankers over the seas, tankercars over the rails, barges over the rivers and trucks over the roads. there is an ammonia pipeline running throughout the corn-belt states with long operation history. no one heard about it due, perhaps, mainly to the lack of incident or accident.
for people interested in finding out more about various aspects of the ammonia fuel application, there is a collection of the presentations through the last four years' ammonia fuel meetings which can be found here.
Partly we see less damage from ammonia than from fossil fuels because it does not burn right away, but partly it is because we use much less. With increased use, the casualty rate will increase. There have been problems with spills from pipelines as well with big fish kills for example. So, increased environmental damage must be expected with increased use. Working out methods of fueling that don't leak, methods of making fuel tanks that survive high speed collisions and other aspects would need to be worked out to get broad adoption. I think that electric vehicles are likely to get a larger market share in the near term at the consumer level. I'm not sure how things might go with trucking.
Chris
if you know any specific incident related to the ammonia pipeline leak, i would like to learn about it. about the big fish kills, are they caused by the run-offs from the over application of ammonia as fertilizer or by the leak or spill related to the transportation of ammonia?
ammonia tank and its refueling should be quite similar to that of propane. if people don't worry about using or carrying propane tanks on vehicle, it is hard to see the rationale to worry about ammonia.
regarding to battery powered EV, it might be interesting for people to know the two cases of cell phone death both caused by the explosion of Li-ion batteries. if such a small sized Li-ion battery could have caused two fatalities, what should one expect from the much bigger ones working in a much tougher condition conducting much larger current?
Cell phone batteries are completely enclosed so trapped gas causes explosive failure. EV batteries may catch fire, but would not explode. There has been at least one case of EV burn out. This is no greater problem than the number of ICE vehicles that catch fire.
Cell phone batteries use Lithium Cobalt Oxide (LiCoO2). In a situation where there's a short or some sort of damage this particualar chemistry can undergo a runaway thermal decomposition because of the release of oxygen from the molocule which reacts with the next molocule releasing even more oxygen which reacts with the next molocule, ad nauseum, until you get an explosion/fire. The smart folks are using LiFeP04 Lithium Iron Phosphate, or Lithium Titanate...which don't have the same explosion/fire problem.
Hi NH3,
There was a large spill in Kansas in 2004.
Some kids were injured recently in Florida as well. This is kind of like people shooting at oil pipelines.
Chris
thanks for the info.
I think that with current federal regulations any vehicle on a public way that is transporting ammonia would need this placard:
Edit: lost the image, text was "Inhalation Hazard"
I think for propane fueled vehicles you sometimes need an alternative fuel placard to let fire departments know what they are dealing with. I think this is state level regulation.
The use of ammonia as a fuel would be problematic - its a hotly sought after component used in methamphetamine production. Some years ago people had to start locking and protecting anhydrous ammonia tanks and every year there are events where the spigot is smashed with a sledge hammer, a little bit of ammonia is stolen, and a large tank is left to drain, spoiling many acres of ground in the process.
well, as the hydrocarbon fueled age of easy life comes to an end, one should indeed expect some heightened demand for those mind altering chemicals. one of the many good things PO or P(ost)PO may, however, do to the world is to set people to focus on what is essential.