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Probably because ammonia production is using a waste product from natural gas plants (hydrogen). This just means that one of the inputs for ammonia production
by gonvaled 8y ago
Probably 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
- pjc50 8y agoI'm fairly sure it's not a free byproduct, it's cracked from natural gas which consumes the gas?