[HN Gopher] The foul-smelling fuel that could power big ships
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The foul-smelling fuel that could power big ships
Author : asplake
Score : 24 points
Date : 2020-11-06 11:55 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| paul_f wrote:
| Won't burning Ammonia create NOx emissions? It is not CO2, but
| NOx is also quite undesirable?
| Confiks wrote:
| You wouldn't burn the ammonia, but use a process to 'crack'
| ammonia into hydrogen and nitrogen gas, for example [1]. No
| oxygen is involved.
|
| Edit: Upon rereading, I found that the article actually states:
| "There are challenges. Burning ammonia can create polluting
| nitrous oxides, therefore the exhaust needs cleaning up", which
| would indicate they're burning it. So either the reporter
| misunderstood or it's really a non-innovation then.
|
| [1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ja5042836
| csours wrote:
| This is the problem with lumping all pollution together: NOx is
| harmful to humans and animals in the short term, causing lung
| irritation. So yes, you really don't want a bunch of ships
| pumping NOx near human populations. I don't know if a ships
| funnel would be enough to get the fumes away from the crew of a
| ship while it's running in the middle of the ocean.
|
| Excess CO2 is not especially harmful to humans in the short
| term (unless you are in a confined area), but it does
| contribute to global climate change.
| troymc wrote:
| Yes, and that was mentioned in the article. I guess you need a
| catalytic converter or similar before atmospheric release.
| imglorp wrote:
| Yes, article mentioned needing to manage emissions. Evidently
| NOx scrubbers are existing tech.
| gruez wrote:
| Isn't the current fuel (bunker fuel) already pretty foul?
| ncmncm wrote:
| The great thing about ammonia is you can make it with just water,
| air, and electric power, and run the conversion only when you
| have excess power to burn.
|
| The next great thing is that, made under a wind farm, it is
| directly useful, on the regular farm often found underneath, as
| both fuel and fertilizer. Excess can be sold to the next farm
| over. So, no fuel or fertilizer transport costs.
|
| The third is that it provides a sink for power generation a long
| ways away from any power grid termination. So, it opens up huge
| swaths of territory where windmills would not be built, despite
| plentiful wind and space.
| Confiks wrote:
| Another option which I don't see mentioned often is using formic
| acid to solve the volumetric capacity problem of storing
| hydrogen.
|
| Compared to ammonia and methanol, formic acid is less energy
| dense, but due to recent advances in catalysts it has the
| potential for simpler and smaller systems in less demanding
| circumstances (heat, pressure) [1].
|
| The only party I know of that is trying to bring this to market
| is Dens [2], formed out of a student group at the University of
| Eindhoven [3]. Their website is a bit high on the rhetoric
| (including trying to coin "hydrozine"), and their mockups looks
| like, well, mockups, but there are real technology advances
| behind this, for example their trial with a city bus [4] (Dutch).
|
| [1] https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110536423-002
|
| [2] https://dens.one/products/
|
| [3] https://teamfast.nl/technology/
|
| [4]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200808210727/https://www.volks...
| ivanbakel wrote:
| I appreciate that your last link isn't useful to most of the HN
| population - but it's also paywalled.
| Confiks wrote:
| Thanks for noticing. Fixed.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| TLDR Ammonia, generated with renewables (hydrogen from
| electrolysis and nitrogen extracted from atmospheric air combined
| with the Haber Bosch process).
| Metacelsus wrote:
| So it's basically just a way to store hydrogen as ammonia.
|
| The Haber-Bosch process isn't very energy efficient, though.
| elcritch wrote:
| Are there more direct methods? It seems like ammonia would be
| much easier to transport than hydrogen, but at the cost of
| another loss of efficiency is a big hit. Though it might be
| cheaper for cargo ship operators who have a lot of capital
| investment.
|
| Looks like ammonia is mostly produced from hydrogen stripped
| from natural gas: https://cen.acs.org/environment/green-
| chemistry/Industrial-a...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Doesn't have to be efficient with renewables that otherwise
| would've been curtailed (throwing away that clean energy).
| Still more energy dense than batteries (for marine vessel
| use).
| csours wrote:
| I agree, but I'm curious to see how it will shake out in
| real life.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Foul-smelling as in "if you breathe it, you die".
| DaniFong wrote:
| Right??
| kccqzy wrote:
| Eh, depends on the concentration. I'm pretty sure your
| introductory chemistry teacher asked you to smell a dilute
| solution of it. And it's a common reagent in introductory
| chemistry classes so you've had plenty of chances of smelling
| it.
| csours wrote:
| At the concentration needed to use as fuel, and in the
| confined machinery space of a ship, it could certainly be
| deadly.
| Someone wrote:
| You can also buy ammonia solution in about every grocery or
| supermarket.
|
| It also is used as a stimulant.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smelling_salts:
|
| _"They are also used as a form of stimulant in athletic
| competitions (such as powerlifting, strong man and ice
| hockey) to "wake up" competitors to perform better. In 2005,
| Michael Strahan estimated that 70-80% of National Football
| League players were using smelling salts as stimulants."_
| troymc wrote:
| I grew up on a farm in Canada and we would breathe ammonia when
| testing the ammonia nozzles on our air seeder.
|
| It didn't smell great, but we didn't die.
| userbinator wrote:
| The dose makes the poison.
|
| Everyone who has encountered the smell of urine has inhaled
| some ammonia fumes too.
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