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Hydrogen derived from ammonia could open up new export market for Australia
- credit_guy 8y agoIt looks like wikipedia was already updated with this information [1]. I personally find their summary to be more informative. “Ammonia can be manufactured from solar energy, air and water. This is an efficient way to package hydrogen into a chemical that is much cheaper to store and transport than pure hydrogen be it as gas or as liquid. In fact, per volume ammonia holds more hydrogen than does liquid hydrogen. Ammonia may be the key to overcome not only the daily but also the seasonal fluctuations of renewable energy sources. This approach will solve many of the problems foreseen for the proposed Hydrogen economy, that instead could be replaced by an Ammonia economy, essentially still a hydrogen economy. In early August 2018, scientists from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) announced the success of developing a process to release hydrogen from ammonia and harvest that at ultra-high purity as a fuel for cars. This uses a special membrane. Two demonstration fuel cell vehicles have the technology, a Hyundai Nexo and Toyota Mirai” [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#Energy_carrier https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#Energy_carrier
- amelius 8y agoWhat is the typical energy density of the ammonia using this process? Also what does the chemical reaction look like when harvesting hydrogen from ammonia?
- fsloth 8y ago"what does the chemical reaction look like when harvesting hydrogen from ammonia?" Reverse Haber process maybe? 2NH3 -> N2 + 3H2
- gonvaled 8y agoHow would this work in an ammonia-powered battery?
- gvb 8y agoIt doesn't. The membrane "cracks" the ammonia into N2 and H2. The N2 is released to the atmosphere. The H2 is used in a hydrogen fuel cell to power an electrical drivetrain or in an internal combustion engine with a mechanical drivetrain.
- gonvaled 8y agohow do you regulate the membrane? does it degrade?
- CompelTechnic 8y agoI wonder, does converting ammonia to hydrogen absorb energy or release it? (Ie is it endothermic or exothermic?)
- refurb 8y agoExothermic as the reverse is endothermic.
- marcosdumay 8y agoIt's highly endothermic. Replacing the hydrogen with oxygen is exothermic. So one can create some ammonia-air fuel cell. But reducing it first to push the hydrogen into a fuel cell will almost surely net a negative amount of energy because of the losses.
- darcyparker 8y ago"The raw energy density of liquid ammonia is 11.5 MJ/L,[64] which is about a third that of diesel." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#As_a_fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#As_a_fuel (Note this is energy density by volume, which is the metric most care about. Energy density by weight of H2 gas is great, but the volume is enormous in comparison.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage Ammonia has been long recognized as a great medium for energy storage and you can generate at the site of electric generation. But the challenge has been extracting the hydrogen from the ammonia. My understanding is that hydrogen crackers exist, but have only been successful commercially at large scale. A portable cracker that you can put on a car that extracts hydrogen on demand from an ammonia storage tank is the innovation we need to see. Apparently there is work in Denmark that looks promising... (And now there is this new membrane technology from Australia.) https://www.mvsengg.com/products/hydrogen/ammonia-cracker/ https://www.mvsengg.com/products/hydrogen/ammonia-cracker/ http://www.ammoniaenergy.org/ammonia-cracking-to-high-purity-hydrogen-for-pem-fuel-cells-in-denmark/ http://www.ammoniaenergy.org/ammonia-cracking-to-high-purity... Personally, I am cheering for ammonia as a storage means. I am not a fan of batteries found in today's electric vehicles because there are too many conflict minerals in them. Maybe Tesla will succeed mining colbat in Colbat Ontario Canada... But until then, it is probably coming from the Congo or Bolivia. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/congo-cobalt-mining-for-lithium-ion-battery/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/c... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-31/the-canadian-ghost-town-that-tesla-is-bringing-back-to-life https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-31/the-canad...
- amelius 8y ago> "The raw energy density of liquid ammonia is 11.5 MJ/L, which is about a third that of diesel." Yes, but that's assuming you'd burn it, I suppose (not a chemist). In this case, you're extracting H atoms using a different process, and I imagine that this wouldn't utilize the full raw energy density of ammonia.
- pjc50 8y agoLooking at the process as a whole, it is burning - or at least oxidation. Starts with NH3 and ends up with H2O and N2 (preferably not NO2). The energy liberated from the bonds is the same. The amount of energy available at the wheels depends on a lot of fine details of how it's used.
- growlist 8y ago> per volume ammonia holds more hydrogen than does liquid hydrogen How is this possible? Suspect the answer would be way over my head!
- tempestn 8y agoI would expect this is due to the fact that each ammonia molecule contains three hydrogen atoms, whereas a hydrogen molecule contains only two. So liquid ammonia would be expected to contain more hydrogen per volume than liquid hydrogen.
- bayesian_horse 8y agoThat would be true of their gases.
- tempestn 8y agoWouldn't it be true of both liquid and gas?
- maga 8y agoAmmonia is 10x more dense than hydrogen gas at the same temperature/pressure, so you can pack more of it into the same volume.
- Shoh3pif 8y agoArmchair chemistry ahead: Molecular hydrogen is unpolarized while ammonia molecules can establish hydrogen bonds, thus packing them more densely under the same conditions. For really dense hydrogen we would need its metallic form but that requires pressures you might find in the core of jupiter. The electromagnetic force is more convenient than gravity.
- pjc50 8y agoSo, does anyone have a link which describes the actual technology? The article seems to switch back and forth from talking about hydrogen to talking about ammonia as a carrier for hydrogen. Note that there's already a huge market for ammonia itself (often as a carrier for nitrogen, for agriculture) http://www.siemens.co.uk/en/insights/potential-of-green-ammonia-as-fertiliser-and-electricity-storage.htm http://www.siemens.co.uk/en/insights/potential-of-green-ammo... Edit: this seems to be more detailed http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable-fuel-made-sun-air-and-water-could-power-globe-without-carbon http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable-fue...
- baybal2 8y ago>"Today is the very first time in the world that hydrogen cars have been fuelled with a fuel derived from ammonia — carbon-free fuel." To begin with, a lot of ammonia production is usually colocated with natural gas plants for a ready supply of hydrogen.
- gonvaled 8y agoProbably because ammonia production is using a waste product from natural gas plants (hydrogen). This just means that one of the inputs for ammonia production has esentially zero cost, on those plants. But it does not answer any of the following questions: 1) Can that scale to produce high quantities of ammonia, without having adverse effects. That is, if the goal is to reduce dependency on hydrocarbons, having more natural gas plants makes no sense. 2) Would it be cheaper to produce hydrogen (and thus ammonia) using other processes? Currently the hydrogen is free from natual gas plants, but the natural gas plant is very much non-free. If you do not want natural gas, it makes no sense.
- baybal2 8y ago>Would it be cheaper to produce hydrogen (and thus ammonia) using other processes? No. The one and only thing coming close to be more economical is the nuclear sulphur-iodine process. But by the time we get to 4G reactors, we will already be in a very different world. Bruteforce electrolysis might be something normal by then just because of its convenience. A dark horse here is the direct production method being recently discovered in Japan. https://phys.org/news/2017-06-ammonia-on-demand-alternative-production-method.html https://phys.org/news/2017-06-ammonia-on-demand-alternative-... - looks almost too good to be true
- tigerlily 8y agoCSIRO is partnering with the British Oxygen Company (BOC) on this tech.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoBOC hasn’t stood for British Oxygen Company since 1978. The company was originally Brin's Oxygen Company, Ltd. started by French Brothers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_BOC_Group https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_BOC_Group
- mjsweet 8y agoHere is a paper created by CSIRO scientists on the round-trip conversion efficiency of the process for different routes The paper also mentions fuel cells which was a question I wondered about: “Ammonia at the point of end use can be converted to hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles or alternatively utilized directly in solid oxide fuel cells, in an internal combustion engine or a gas turbine. “ https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.7b02219 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.7b02219
- maga 8y agoAmmonia is toxic, though, we will have to convert it back to hydrogen way before it reaches the car or most gas stations, just to be on a safe side.
- _Codemonkeyism 8y agoPetrol is also toxic, that said I have no clue about the relative toxicity.
- semi-extrinsic 8y agoPetrol is safe enough that you can let untrained people pour it from one tank to another. Spill a little, no problem. Ammonia is a gas at standard temperature, and will be transported and used as a liquid under pressure. If you expose liquid ammonia to the atmosphere, all of it boils off rapidly. The IDLH (immediate danger to life and health) limit for ammonia is 300 parts per million. If you release 15 grams of ammonia inside a typical garage, you have exceeded the IDLH threshold. If you spill just 1 gram, the smell is so strong the average person is running away in fear.
- Dylan16807 8y ago> If you spill just 1 gram, the smell is so strong the average person is running away in fear. That's a safety feature.
- marcosdumay 8y agoYes. With natural gas we have to add it, in ammonia it's there for free.
- jacobush 8y agoSpill some gas/petrol, wait a couple of minutes, and most of the toxicity is gone and no harm done to you except that you have increased your chance, very slightly, of getting cancer during your lifespan. Spill ammonia? https://www.vyperlook.com/extreme-things/policeman-killed-instantly-by-an-ammonia-gas-tank/ https://www.vyperlook.com/extreme-things/policeman-killed-in...
- nicktelford 8y agoDoes anyone know what the potential as a utility-scale energy storage medium is? I have this inkling that developing this for cars isn't the best use, as battery EV looks set to best Hydrogen fuel-cells in that market. Instead, I think pursuing it for shipping, aviation and utility-scale energy storage is a much better idea.
- mjsweet 8y agoCan anyone confirm that this is simply a way to package hydrogen into a safe transportation medium to international markets (from Australia as an example) and then converted back to hydrogen when it reaches the target country? Put it this way, is it converted back to hydrogen before it’s pumped into the car? I kinda like the idea of ammonia being converted into hydrogen in the car but judging from the news reports we have seen here in Australia the membrane technology looks quite large... more something one would see in a refinery than a car. So my question is: at what stage would the ammonia be converted back to hydrogen; at a refinery, the service station or in the car itself?
- Shoh3pif 8y agoCars are far from the only potential consumer. Sure, you might also use some of the hydrogen to power cars with fuel cells. Or you use it to charge EVs. Or you use the ammonia directly for grid electricity and heating. Or industrial processes.
- rjsw 8y agoYou would want to do the conversion as late as possible, hydrogen is difficult to store [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement
- tk75x 8y agoSince there are already hydrogen fuel cars available from reputable manufacturers who (I assume) would be hesitant to add a fairly complicated component into their production vehicles, it might be easiest to transport liquid ammonia to car fill stations at which point it would be converted to hydrogen before going into the cars.
- black6 8y agoThe arid locations mentioned in the article are lacking one of the feedstocks for this reaction -- water. I am not an Aussie, so what I know may be wrong, but doesn't Australia already have a water shortage inland?
- Shoh3pif 8y agoYou probably need relatively little water compared to other processes that evaporate/drain it (agriculture) or use it for run-through cooling (power plants). Even an ocean tanker full of water wouldn't make much of a dent into the flow rates of a river.
- tk75x 8y agoOther articles talking about this technology mention the possibility of using clean energy (solar/wind) to desalinate water to facilitate the production of ammonia.
- radicalbyte 8y agoAmmonia is also key to modern agriculture; it would be fantastic news if it became economical to create it from air and water using wind or solar power. When it is, we need to cover Australia, North Africa and the Southern United States with sun panels and start piping/shipping it to the places it can be used.
- mchannon 8y agoAustralia does not have huge deposits of hydrogen they're just sitting around trying to find uses for. So the input for this technology is imaginary. Making ammonia out of hydrogen, which is so useful that half your food comes from it, is called the Haber-Bosch process (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process), and has been around for about a century. Ammonia is a pretty crappy way to move things around too. Not as bad as hydrogen, but if you have ammonia, reacting it with some CO2 to make urea is how the professionals do it. Ammonia is still a dangerous gas or liquid. Urea is inoffensive little white pellets. You can already buy urea at American truck stops as "DEF" or diesel exhaust fluid. Finally, unless they've miniaturized their technology to where you can pump ammonia into your car to run it on hydrogen instead of filling it directly with hydrogen, you're still limited by hydrogen's crappy storage density where it's needed most- in the car. So let's take two flows and compare them to this technology's flows: NG -> pipeline -> CNG -> CNG Engine (simple, if not all that widespread) e- -> grid -> EV charger -> battery -> EV motor (same) vs. Aussie coal -> CO2 + H2 -> NH3 -> H2 -> H2 tank -> Fuel Cell -> EV motor or Aussie PV -> H2 -> NH3 -> H2 -> H2 tank -> Fuel Cell -> EV motor I wish I could educate newspeople on how to distinguish real breakthroughs from university-sponsored snake oil like this.
- bayesian_horse 8y agoMaybe the scientists involve did think twice before embarking on such an endeavor?
- Dylan16807 8y agoYou seem to be dismissively implying that because scientists are experts that they have obviously considered this. Which isn't true at all. Scientists are typically much more motivated by the pursuit of knowledge than strict commercial value.
- yomly 8y agoI checked out the Toyota Mirai - it does indeed use hydrogen gas cylinders from what I can tell. So this research is targeting simply the ability to transport hydrogen. Ironically, the ships that carry all that ammonia to Asia almost certainly used fossil fuels and who knows what the carbon footprint around building the membranes for the hydrogen transfer is like
- acd 8y agoOther ammonia based car projects http://www.nh3car.com/ http://www.nh3car.com/ https://nh3fuelassociation.org/2013/06/20/the-amveh-an-ammonia-fueled-car-from-south-korea/ https://nh3fuelassociation.org/2013/06/20/the-amveh-an-ammon... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
- SCAQTony 8y agoLithium, cobalt and Metal hydride are messy and Lithium, since it is so cheap, it is not recycled for reuse. Though hydrogen is leaky, clunky and expensive to get from source to engine, it will be a better investment in reduced CO2 emission, a reduced need for lithium salt "flats" and cobalt mines. (Ever seen a cobalt mine?) scorching the earth surface. Lithium to cheap to recycle: https://waste-management-world.com/a/1-the-lithium-battery-recycling-challenge https://waste-management-world.com/a/1-the-lithium-battery-r... "...Recycled lithium is as much as five times the cost of lithium produced from the least costly brine based process. It is not competitive for recycling companies to extract lithium from slag, or competitive for the OEMs to buy at higher price points from recycling companies. " Cobalt Mines and their problems: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2018/02/28/the-cost-of-cobalt/?utm_term=.11e1d3b1c0dc https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2018/02/28/t... Goro Nickel Mine image: http://www.sulphuric-acid.com/sulphuric-acid-on-the-web/acid%20plants/Goro%20Nickel%201.jpg http://www.sulphuric-acid.com/sulphuric-acid-on-the-web/acid...
- timbit42 8y ago> Dr Dolan said the cost for the fuel would be around $15 a kilogram, with an average car holding five kilos of pure hydrogen in a tank. "But the efficiency of the car is twice as good as current gasoline cars, so you can actually drive twice as far on a tank," he said. So AUD $75 for 800 kms? My Prius gets 600 kms on the highway on a CAD $40 tank of gasoline. Perhaps a hydrogen/electric hybrid would be better.
- krishnamohan291 8y agoIt is a watershed moment for australian economy.New areas opportunites will boost the income and generate jobs on a large scale for job aspirants and will have a cascading effect on the economy