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Liquid anhydrous ammonia is already the obvious way to store and use hydrogen. It contains lots of hydrogen but doesn't have the embrittlement issues that eleme

Liquid anhydrous ammonia is already the obvious way to store and use hydrogen. It contains lots of hydrogen but doesn't have the embrittlement issues that elemental hydrogen does. Agricultural regions have extensive storage and distribution capacity due to its use as fertilizer, so no new technology is needed for handling ammonia. Common internal combustion engines can burn ammonia as fuel with minimal modification. The only thing holding back the use of ammonia as energy storage is the fact that fossil fuels are still the most efficient feedstock. Once solar is more efficient, ammonia will see widespread production and use.

m463 7y ago
Also it's a dangerous material to spill.
- entee 7y ago
  Very much so. Would be hard to breathe at any accident site with a leak.
  - rstuart4133 7y ago
    But not quiet as hard to breath as 60 litres of petrol, going up in a ball of flames.
    - entee 7y ago
      Perhaps, though I once broke a 1L bottle of ammonium hydroxide (a strong solution of ammonia) in the lab. We literally couldn’t go in the room for 15 min. That was just 1L of not 100% ammonia, and we had a door where we could get out. Even if the ammonia isn’t flammable, you might kill occupants of a car with what is effectively a poison gas.
    - CamperBob2 7y ago
      Which doesn't happen in the real world because of the way fuel tanks are constructed. Meanwhile, anhydrous ammonia is one of those things that give experienced hazmat workers nightmares.
      - jessaustin 7y ago
        Most of the people who safely use anhydrous ammonia on a regular basis are farmhands, not experienced hazmat workers. The training and equipment that allows them to do that would also be available to e.g. municipal bus lines or delivery companies. Any firm that hires people to refuel its vehicles could afford this. Eventually more fool-proof nozzles and storage tanks might be developed so that regular people with personal cars could safely handle this fuel, but it will be practical for other uses long before then.
        CamperBob2 7y ago
        Interestingly, the last time I heard an argument like this, it was being put forth in favor of using butane or propane as a replacement for CFC refrigerants in cars. That idea never caught on, but it's not clear if safety concerns in accidents were the reason. At any rate, unless Farmer Brown regularly drives his fertilizer sprayer around on the farm at 70 MPH, I'm not convinced your analogy holds much more water than the anhydrous ammonia does. Hydrogen is best thought of as an energy transfer mechanism -- an extremely lossy one at that -- not an energy source, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. It's hard to believe that ammonia-based storage is the missing factor in the hydrogen equation that we've all been searching for.
        jessaustin 7y ago
        You have inconsistent fears. Presumably you mention 70mph because you're afraid of explosions from vehicle collisions. Yet ammonia is much less flammable (NFPA 1) than gasoline (3), and much much less flammable than elemental hydrogen (4). Ammonia is regularly used as a refrigerant and has been for longer than CFCs have existed. It is poisonous, but no more so than many gasoline additives and less so than tetraethyllead, which was a common additive until quite recently. More to the point, when burned in an engine it produces nitrogen and water, which are much safer than ICE exhaust. No one is proposing hydrogen or ammonia as an energy source. There are no underground deposits. They will only make sense once solar generation is efficient enough that electrolysis becomes competitive with fossil fuels. We'll know that's coming soon when hydrogen hype artists are drowned out by engineers talking about ammonia.
    - kube-system 7y ago
      The difference being that anhydrous ammonia doesn't need to be ignited to be extremely hazardous to health. Gasoline spills are not uncommon, but most of them go unignited.
mhandley 7y ago
The Royal Society's policy briefing report on Green Ammonia goes into all this in detail, and makes the case pretty well: https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/low-carbon-energy-programme/green-ammonia/ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/low-carbon-e...

m463 7y ago

Also it's a dangerous material to spill.

entee 7y ago
Very much so. Would be hard to breathe at any accident site with a leak.
- rstuart4133 7y ago
  But not quiet as hard to breath as 60 litres of petrol, going up in a ball of flames.
  - entee 7y ago
    Perhaps, though I once broke a 1L bottle of ammonium hydroxide (a strong solution of ammonia) in the lab. We literally couldn’t go in the room for 15 min. That was just 1L of not 100% ammonia, and we had a door where we could get out. Even if the ammonia isn’t flammable, you might kill occupants of a car with what is effectively a poison gas.
  - CamperBob2 7y ago
    Which doesn't happen in the real world because of the way fuel tanks are constructed. Meanwhile, anhydrous ammonia is one of those things that give experienced hazmat workers nightmares.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      Most of the people who safely use anhydrous ammonia on a regular basis are farmhands, not experienced hazmat workers. The training and equipment that allows them to do that would also be available to e.g. municipal bus lines or delivery companies. Any firm that hires people to refuel its vehicles could afford this. Eventually more fool-proof nozzles and storage tanks might be developed so that regular people with personal cars could safely handle this fuel, but it will be practical for other uses long before then.
      - CamperBob2 7y ago
        Interestingly, the last time I heard an argument like this, it was being put forth in favor of using butane or propane as a replacement for CFC refrigerants in cars. That idea never caught on, but it's not clear if safety concerns in accidents were the reason. At any rate, unless Farmer Brown regularly drives his fertilizer sprayer around on the farm at 70 MPH, I'm not convinced your analogy holds much more water than the anhydrous ammonia does. Hydrogen is best thought of as an energy transfer mechanism -- an extremely lossy one at that -- not an energy source, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. It's hard to believe that ammonia-based storage is the missing factor in the hydrogen equation that we've all been searching for.
        jessaustin 7y ago
        You have inconsistent fears. Presumably you mention 70mph because you're afraid of explosions from vehicle collisions. Yet ammonia is much less flammable (NFPA 1) than gasoline (3), and much much less flammable than elemental hydrogen (4). Ammonia is regularly used as a refrigerant and has been for longer than CFCs have existed. It is poisonous, but no more so than many gasoline additives and less so than tetraethyllead, which was a common additive until quite recently. More to the point, when burned in an engine it produces nitrogen and water, which are much safer than ICE exhaust. No one is proposing hydrogen or ammonia as an energy source. There are no underground deposits. They will only make sense once solar generation is efficient enough that electrolysis becomes competitive with fossil fuels. We'll know that's coming soon when hydrogen hype artists are drowned out by engineers talking about ammonia.
  - kube-system 7y ago
    The difference being that anhydrous ammonia doesn't need to be ignited to be extremely hazardous to health. Gasoline spills are not uncommon, but most of them go unignited.

mhandley 7y ago

The Royal Society's policy briefing report on Green Ammonia goes into all this in detail, and makes the case pretty well: https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/low-carbon-energy-programme/green-ammonia/ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/low-carbon-e...