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In the first installment of this series, I spoke to the notion of a hydrogen economy built upon a foundation of using anhydrous ammonia as a hydrogen carrier. I have received an overwhelming response of questions which I would like to address below.
Q) I can tell you right now that one of my Senators, would object because she'd say that using this as fuel would drive up price of fertilizer. And would be too easy for meth cookers to obtain. Plus it's very toxic stuff for civilians to be handling like gas, isn't it?
A) We need to produce ammonia with our renewable sources because it can easily be done, and it will reduce imports at first since nearly 2/3 of our ammonia is presently imported. We would need at least 1000 wind farms just to do that much. It would LOWER the price of fertilizer as new production comes to bear, and CREATE a million new USA jobs in both the ammonia production industry and Wind Power industry. In the second phase, we would add new big solar power plants and ocean thermal energy conversion plants to produce the transportation fuels for all forms of transport, replacing oil. That would require nearly 50 Quads of new production, and CREATE TEN MILLION MORE USA JOBS!!!!
Ammonia is toxic in an enclosed environment (OSHA 8-hour exposure limit is 25 vol ppm versus 1000 ppm for propane for example). However its "odor limit" is only 5 ppm vs. over 10,000 ppm for propane (unless odorized) and its flammability is much lower: (1) The lower and higher explosion levels (LEL and HEL) in air are 15 and 28 vol %, versus 2.1 and 9.5 for propane; and its “normal” flame speed is lower as well: 6.3 versus 41 cm/second for ammonia and propane. We have been using ammonia around civilians for nearly two centuries, especially as a refrigerant before the now banned freons were invented.
As for meth heads, yeah they can get ammonia easier than before, but they still need access to ephedrine. Ammonia is easy to make. That has never been an obstacle.
Then there's the export market. Once we produce renewable systems cheaply and billions of tons of ammonia, we can replace the world's current oil addiction with a clean substitute. Sort of like methadone for heroin addicts. AMMONIA WILL CREATE 30 MILLION NEW USA JOBS!!!!
Q) I'm not familiar with using ammonia as "fuel" . How does it fire in an I.C.E. (Internal Combustion Engine)?
A) Because of ammonia’s low flame speed, present ICEs may heat- and break-up some ammonia into hydrogen and nitrogen to achieve the needed flame speed This process is facilitated by ammonia’s high (120-180) octane rating, so that, as stated in an Argonne National Laboratory report of a few years ago, the efficiency of conversion of ammonia to power is over 50% in a turbo-diesel, on par with other fuels. However, remember also that the heating values of ammonia (weight and liq. volume-based) are about half the values for propane. The products of ammonia combustion are water vapor and nitrogen. The NOx emissions in ICEs (and power plants) are abated by adding one mole of NH3 for each mole of NOx in the exhaust, to convert the NOx to N2 and H2O (water). This is currently done on all high-performance engines which employ a high compression ratio (i.e., they run hot and highly efficient).
Anhydrous ammonia also can be “burned” in a fuel cell at 50 to 70% efficiency. It's also a good rocket fuel. We used it on the X-15 at NASA nearly 50 years ago.
Q) Has ammonia ever been used in a public setting on a large, municipal scale?
A) The St. Charles Avenue Line began operation in 1833 running street cars through the heart of New Orleans, for a distance of about seven and a half miles. This street car was powered entirely with anhydrous ammonia for 60 years until it was electrified in 1893. It had no carbon emissions whatsoever. In the late 19th century, public transit throughout Europe used ammonia -powered street cars. We need to resurrect and duplicate these feats of advanced engineering to rid ourselves of fossil fuel systems.
Q) Isn't ammonia critical to the manufacture of many chemical and products?
A) Yes, ammonia is a crucial component in making everything from plastics to composites to advanced pharmaceuticals to explosives to industrial cleaners and of course, fertilizers -- more than 1100 compounds since I started counting. An example is carbon fiber used in the composites used for next generation transportation vehicles and aircraft. Carbon fiber is generally made from pitch (coal tar, mostly from petrochemicals) and Polyacrylonitrile (PAN). The latter is made with polymerization of Acrylonitrile, probably the nitrile manufactured on the largest scale. Most industrial acrylonitrile is produced through the Sohio process, the catalytic ammoxidation of propylene: 2CH3-CH=CH2 + 2NH3 + 3O2 >> 2CH2=CH-C≡N + 6H2O. As you can see, this is yet another process dependent upon ammonia as a reactant.
Q) What is the most efficient process for producing ammonia?
A) The cheapest process is making ammonia from coal, the way they do it in China. We've made it here for over a century starting with natural gas. The most efficient, by far, is the process invented here in America recently known as Solid State Ammonia Synthesis, or SSAS, in which ammonia is reversibly produced directly from water vapor and nitrogen using a special, high-temperature proton-conducting membrane and input of electrical energy, similar to the oxygen-ion-conducting membranes used in solid-state-zirconia-based fuel cells. The electricity for SSAS can be produced from any source of energy; e.g., wind farms, solar plants, nuclear power, ocean thermal energy conversion plants, even hydroelectric power, along with air and water. That's it. It can be produced at an efficiency of roughly 60% measured by raw energy in to energy contained in the anhydrous ammonia product.
Ammonia is the ultimate green synthetic fuel that is in pure harmony with the environment and fully sustainable. The first country to begin to build large scale SSAS plants fed by renewable power will dominate the world economy for centuries.
Q) Why not just build facilities based upon pure hydrogen instead of fooling around with ammonia?
A) The quick answer is volumetric energy density. Liquid anhydrous ammonia is three times as dense as hydrogen in its liquid state (compressed to 10,000 psi!), ten times as dense when hydrogen is compressed to 1000 psi. If hydrogen is piped in gas pipelines, it is ten times less dense than methane in terms of energy, so it is very expensive to ship via pipeline. Ammonia is four times as dense as methane in a pipeline, which is why it is already pipelined from the Gulf throughout the Midwest to large agricultural concerns to be used as fertilizer. We have over 3,000 miles of ammonia pipelines in the USA. There are none for hydrogen. Hydrogen is less safe -- it is very explosive. Ammonia can be stored if chilled to below freezing at atmospheric pressure, but it can also be stored at under 130 psi without chilling and remain a liquid – like propane (LPG). It is lighter than air, and it stinks when released, but it rises straight up into the sky. It readily dissolves in water to form ammonium hydroxide, which some farms use for drip irrigation.
Q) Where can I get more information about ammonia?
A) Go to this link -- http://www.ammoniafuelnetwork.org/why.html This is just a smattering of the questions I've received on this topic. If you have more, or just wish to comment, I'm right here and ready to provide the answers I can. My Skype handle is Paul20854. |
