9 ms·

First ammonia-fueled ship hits a snag

134 points by pseudolus 2y ago

imchillyb 2y ago
What is the environmental impact of this ship sinking, leaking, or even dumping the ammonia payload?
- pbmonster 2y ago
  It dissolves in water quickly. Then big algae bloom, lots of dead fish. Mammals handle it OK. Ammonia can directly act as a nitrogen fertilizer, and plants love that. Mammals quickly convert it in their livers, but aquatic animals can't handle having it in their bloodstream and die quickly from it. High concentrations can overwhelm the liver, and then its toxic even for humans. Pure, ammonia vapor is incredibly toxic and even tiny concentrations are bad for the mucosa.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    I believe in much of the ocean nitrogen is not the limiting nutrient for plant growth, because while it can be fixed from dissolved molecular nitrogen, there's no direct major source of things like phosphorus or iron. Things would be different near coasts where sediment is washing in.
  - giardini 2y ago
    What could possibly go wrong? pbmonster says "Pure, ammonia vapor is incredibly toxic and even tiny concentrations are bad for the mucosa." As in "dissolves the mucosa"! The 1976 ammonia truck disaster: In 1976 a truck of ammonia gas ruptured on a freeway interchange in Houston. The scene was akin to early World War I gas warfare. The Houston Post newspaper office building was about a half mile from the spill. The ammonia cloud rolled over and past the building in minutes but quick-witted building engineers shut down the air circulation system so no one inside was hurt. The greenery around the building and area was scorched brown by the passing heavier-than-air ammonia cloud: "How A Deadly Cloud In Houston Decades Ago Led To ‘Shelter-In-Place’ (good pic of the initial truck explosion):" https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2016/04/25/144853/how-a-deadly-cloud-in-houston-decades-ago-led-to-shelter-in-place/ https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2016/04/25/... Film footage of the scene and victims - moderately gory: "The worst accident in Houston history: The 1976 ammonia truck disaster": https://abc13.com/ammonia-truck-disaster-houston/1332062/ https://abc13.com/ammonia-truck-disaster-houston/1332062/
- xoa 2y ago
  According to a quick search, Viking Energy apparently will have a 220 cubic meter tank, which would equate to 220000 liters of ammonia. In aquaculture apparently ammonia reaches an almost universally high damage/lethal combination for fish (mammals can handle significant amounts thanks to a specific enzyme to handle build up the blood, fish have to just excrete it fast enough) and other non-mammals at around 2mg/L. Assuming all 220000 L of ammonia went 100% into the water and dissolved completely times 0.769 kg/m^3 density at STP, it'd be at the lethal level when dissolved in less than 84590000 liters of water, which equates to a cube approximately 44 meters per side or a sphere with a radius of 27 meters. Even with a 10x margin (since apparently some organisms can suffer damage even if not death from 0.2mg/L) that's nothing for an ocean going ship in general. So at least at first glance to me that looks very favorable vs the bunker fuel ships normally use, which is also horribly toxic but also floats and is much harder for creatures to get rid of.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    > times 0.769 kg/m^3 density at STP The ship's tank is not at STP. The ammonia inside it is pressurized into a liquid.
    - yread 2y ago
      Indeed it's more like 600 kg/m3, so, about 1000 times more ammonia. So, the cube would be about 10 times bigger (side of 400m). https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/ammonia-liquid-thermal-properties-d_1765.html https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/ammonia-liquid-thermal-pr...
      - marcosdumay 2y ago
        Yep. You just immediately killed all life in a volume larger than the ship, and since diffusion on volumes that large take time, created a plume of toxic water that will wander for many minutes before dissolving well enough. Not a big deal on the ocean. And yeah, better than an oil spill.
- timewizard 2y ago
  You put people on a ship across the ocean and they're going to dump their waste tanks into it. They're going to spill and leak industrial chemicals into it. There's a certain amount of loss that occurs during shipping and additional packaging that goes into securing it. You're better off building things closer to where they are needed rather than relying on shipping for cheap consumer goods. Bunker fuel oil, LNG, ammonia, it's all putting the cart before the horse.
_aavaa_ 2y ago
Hopefully this ship of fools runs aground before it kills its whole crew with the first, inevitable, leak.
- pbmonster 2y ago
  Once corrosion is under control, is that danger actually higher than the risk of a natural gas fuel system leaking and killing a whole crew? Both gases are lighter than air, both form explosive mixtures with air (but ammonia-air mixture has much slower flame speed and slower pressure rise than natural gas - for which it makes up with its much higher toxicity). In the end, gas leaks are always bad. But at least you can easily smell an ammonia leak.
  - iamthemonster 2y ago
    No the ammonia toxicity hazard is incredibly severe, it immediately burns your lungs and you die by choking on your own blood as your lungs dissolve. Whereas with natural gas leaks you can reduce the likelihood of ignition by intrinsically safe instrumentation and electrical components. In both cases, gas detection and automated shutdown and sectionalisation helps significantly.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    > But at least you can easily smell an ammonia leak. IIRC, they add a very nasty smelling chemical to LNG so that leaks are evident before they get explosive. In the case of ammonia, the additive is not really needed, and the toxicity being much higher makes me think that, by the time you realize you are breathing ammonia, it's already too late.
    - pbmonster 2y ago
      I know they add a thiol (sulfur compound that smells like rotten eggs) to the city mains for cooking/heating gas. Would be interesting to know if its commonly added to industrial LNG. Because we burn a lot of that - even if you only add a few ppm thiol to natural gas, that's a whole lot of sulfur being burnt...
InDubioProRubio 2y ago
Maybe try hydrogen? Or beavers? Have it driven by environmental movements, you finance selective steered into being maximum annoying?
- fredgrott 2y ago
  it does seem safer see https://blog.ballard.com/marine/worlds-first-liquid-powered-hydrogen-ship-mf-hydra-is-powered-by-ballards-fuel-cells https://blog.ballard.com/marine/worlds-first-liquid-powered-...
- Climatebamb 2y ago
  [flagged]
- j33zusjuice 2y ago
  Seems you left out a whole bunch of words because that comment doesn’t make any sense.
  - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
    It makes, when you consider, that its all just "measures" by the oil industry to stop society from steering away from it. They either invest in DoA technologies or technologies that allow for greenwashing of fossil fuels. Beavers? Lets say you want to steer the population away form reasonable environmental goals like high speed rail or public transport (which has to cost something to keep bums out). You then pick some mad-sob with a insane initiative like "rewild skunks in the inner city parks" and pump that up with donated millions. Result, that mad- as a hatter, propagates his "initiative", riles up the masses and his co-goals - which may include high-speed rail get discredited.
rdtsc 2y ago
> Ammonia is toxic, explosive, and corrosive Someone I knew died from inhaling ammonia vapors after the system wasn’t purged properly and they opened a valve. Having a whole ship fueled by it seems like insanity when there is fuel that does to that to a person.
- patates 2y ago
  I'm sorry for your loss. Ammonia is the the thing that our body happily spends its precious water in more-than-enough amounts just to make sure it's gotten rid of. The only mammal that optimized that process is camels if I'm not misremembering. I also found it a bit crazy to fill a ship with it.
  - 38 2y ago
    [flagged]
- GJim 2y ago
  Petrol is also insanely dangerous, yet we seem to manage.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Petro is practically safe compared to ammonia. Petro only explodes in specific air-fuel situations. The vapors are harmful, but not deadly in small quantities like ammonia is. Calling petro "insanely dangerous" is wrong. Petro is the most dangerous substance normal people handle in quantity, but we allow normal people to handle it in quantity because it while it isn't safe it isn't all that dangerous. Your standard household ammonia CONCENTRATE people sometimes use for cleaning is 99% water - you dilute it significantly for use. Even used correctly it is nasty stuff.
    - unwind 2y ago
      Petro (sic) only explodes in specific air-fuel situations That seems to be true for ammonia as well, at least according to the Wikipedia page's [1] section on Combustion: Ammonia does not burn readily or sustain combustion, except under narrow fuel-to-air mixtures of 15–28% ammonia by volume in air. That doesn't sound too horrible, it feels like gasoline/petrol is easier to combust (although I know it's the fumes that are actually flammable). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#Combustion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#Combustion
preisschild 2y ago
I wonder what environmentally-friendly propulsion system wins in the next decade for large ships: ammonia, hydrogen or nuclear reactors.
- rich_sasha 2y ago
  I suppose there's more, ethanol and methanol, synthetic natural gas. It is a shame petroleum-based fuels are so damn convenient.
- iamthemonster 2y ago
  none of those three, but I expect a combination of methanol, biodiesel and (only for near-shore and inland shipping) battery electric.
- McDyver 2y ago
  Or wind https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanbird https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanbird
  - preisschild 2y ago
    Might have niche-applications, but a nuclear-powered container ship can do many more trips in the time it takes this to do 1 trip.
  - j33zusjuice 2y ago
    We’ve come full circle.
- speed_spread 2y ago
  I propose submerged stainless steel cables pulling boats from underneath, powered by deep geothermal converters.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  Synthetic hydrocarbon analogues. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43344373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43344373>
iamthemonster 2y ago
2026 is still a very ambitious startup date for this. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has only just approved interim guidelines for the addition of ammonia to the IGF Code (use of gaseous fuels). There's a lot to it, but this is a good high level overview: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/imo-interim-guidelines-safety-ships-using-ammonia-fuel-muammer-akturk-n2e0c/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/imo-interim-guidelines-safety... A lot of commentators believe that since ammonia is less inherently safe it will inevitably be less safe in practice. I am not convinced by that argument, and in general if there's a strong enough business driver then anything can be made safe. But what really swung me against the idea of ammonia as a shipping fuel is that the expected cost is barely any better than methanol (which is much more inherently safe) and is more expensive than biodiesel. The shipping companies have a real conundrum on their hands - do they go ammonia, methanol, stick with diesel, or try to get near-shore and inland shipping onto electric? Ammonia-fuelled ships have to be THOROUGHLY designed from the ground up specifically for ammonia use; you have to be 100% committed to go down that path. Whereas biodiesel can simply be dropped in (you can of course choose to fill up with a biodiesel blend today, but nobody does because you can put emissions into the atmosphere for free). Unlike solar cells or battery cells, I don't really see much chance for 'learning rates' and technology improvement to drastically drive down the cost of green ammonia. Falling electrolyser costs are nice, but they're only a portion of the process plant CAPEX, and the cost of the green electricity dominates the economics over the process plant CAPEX anyway. You could get electrolysers for free and still be unable to make cheap green ammonia. So for green ammonia to get adopted, a strong 'carbon price' needs to be in place, and I think that same strong carbon price would make biodiesel competitive.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  > So for green ammonia to get adopted, a strong 'carbon price' needs to be in place, and I think that same strong carbon price would make biodiesel competitive. And next to ammonia, biodiesel is almost drinkable.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    And there's the entire CO versus NO or NO2. But well, the silver lining is that the combustion products literally burning your lungs means that you won't unknowingly lock yourself in a room with a running engine.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
Ammonia tankers seem a good test bed for this tech as they already carry Ammonia and dock in places that handle it. Other fuel cell based technologies seem to be working on scaling up, they can supplement electrical generation for crew before working with the existing generators with the aim to eventually replace them. Like trains, ships get technical benefits from being hybrid. This makes it relatively easy then to be made more hybrid, plug into shore power when available, add some batteries and, solar panels etc. There's no one easy fix but lots of little ones. The most interesting one I saw discussed is contracts that share the blame when delays happen. Previously ships would race to their destination and then wait around because if they missed a connection they would be held responsible. Now they can all go at slower, more efficient just-in-time speeds and the costs of the occasional missed deadline are amortized. With fuel savings they all come out ahead so it's a win-win.
SamPatt 2y ago
>“Twenty or thirty years ago, the shipping industry made a major shift to natural gas, believing it was the fuel of the future. Now, we know it wasn’t the right step,” says Prousalidis. This sentence confuses me. The shipping industry runs on natural gas? If so, why is there regret? My impression is that most systems using natural gas right now are in a good position. What am I missing here?
- sidewndr46 2y ago
  Almost all shipping by weight is done by burning bunker. By ship quantity, most ships probably actually just burn some variant of diesel. Some do run off natural gas. If you read through industry journals, you can find some point in the late 80s where the industry journals were all reporting about how all ships would need to go back to burning coal soon. I'm pretty sure this was just a fantasy that shipbuilders paid the journals to push as it would mean the opportunity to sell lots of new ships. I doubt the statement you quoted is grounded in any reality.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    I'd thought that several notable ships had been refitted to burn petrol, though I can't find the references I'd had in mind. (I'd think that petrol itself would be a less desirable fuel for some of the same reasons as ammonia: it's heavier-than air, sinks, and burns rapidly or explodes when vapours combine with air.)
- looofooo0 2y ago
  Batteries are most likely the most feasible option for many applications soon.
- iamthemonster 2y ago
  Liquefied Natural Gas was expected to be a lower-emission alternative fuel compared to bunker fuel. The proportion of LNG fuelled cargo tankers out there right now is about 2% but for new orders, about 30% of them are LNG fuelled so that small percentage will grow rapidly. However, for United States LNG in particular, the LNG production chain actually has very high emissions of methane. The industry has been fighting to keep that as unclear and unquantified as absolutely possible, and there's a good reason for that - when you take into account the methane emissions along the whole value chain from drilling through liquefaction, LNG's climate impact (in terms of global warming) is no better than coal. I'm sure it's beneficial compared to bunker fuel, but the climate benefit is much much slimmer than first believed.
keepamovin 2y ago
I misread, and really hoped, it was “first ammonia-fueled sheep hits a snag.” Boy that was gonna be a fascinating article! Still read this one though probably, seems interesting.
caycep 2y ago
Ammonia...this ship could be run on poop...
- wpollock 2y ago
  Bad news, men. The captain says we're behind schedule so beans for supper again!
- npteljes 2y ago
  Ammonia is in peepee, not poopoo. Maybe you are thinking methane, which is present in farts.
  - caycep 2y ago
    I think it is in both but you need bacteria for the poop. but that's 2 sources of fuel instead of one!
cratermoon 2y ago
Reading about ammonia as a ship fuel gives me strong Ignition! vibes. For those not familiar, Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Drury Clark goes into detail about all the different things aerospace engineers have tried, including some incredibly dangerous combinations. The conclusion for many of the tests is usually along this lines of "this makes a very powerful, lightweight rocket, but the tendency towards disastrous results makes it impractical".
jnmandal 2y ago
Isn't the energy return on investment for this extremely low and/or negative? Am I missing something here?
- api 2y ago
  It's a way of storing energy. You use solar, nuclear, wind, etc. to make ammonia.
  - jnmandal 2y ago
    I get that but isn't it like 100x more efficient to be storing that energy to offset intermittency/base power or selling that ammonium as fertilizer to offset hydrocarbon-based haber bosch ferts?
    - api 2y ago
      There are more efficient ways, but batteries are heavy and still not as compact as liquid fuels. If you want to run ships on non-carbon-based energy making a liquid fuel is one way that can work today.
lupusreal 2y ago
It doesn't seem like a great idea to use what is essentially fertilizer as a fuel. Surely this new demand will drive up the price of fertilizer.
- p1mrx 2y ago
  The idea is to make ammonia from electricity. If this scales up, it could lead to electric fertilizer, and greatly reduce agricultural carbon emissions.
- NotYourLawyer 2y ago
  Maybe. But longer term, new uses for ammonia might well lead to more efficient and widespread production.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    Ammonia is not some obscure chemical until now neglected by science and industry, the problem of producing ammonia has already received the attention of several generations of the greatest minds humanity has. Adding yet more commercial demand for what is already very much in demand isn't going to help in any meaningful way. It's just going to drive up the price of fertilizer, and therefore the price of food. As for doing it with electricity; that will never be more cost effective than doing it with natural gas. If you want to reduce carbon emissions, turn your attention to other industries. Fucking with the global food supply is the last thing anybody should be doing.
    - mulmen 2y ago
      > the problem of producing ammonia has already received the attention of several generations of the greatest minds humanity has. Sure but they were working with the constraints of the times. Renewable electricity generation doesn’t have the same level of maturity and it’s already surpassing fossil options with tons of room to scale. > that will never be more cost effective than doing it with natural gas. We have an effectively infinite supply of electricity but a finite supply of natural gas. The trends are clear. Electricity is going to continue to get cheaper essentially forever and fossil fuels will continue to become more scarce and thus expensive until it's not economical to use them. You just have to draw the timeline long enough and electricity becomes the cheaper option for ammonium production and renewable electricity becomes the cheapest electricity source. > Fucking with the global food supply is the last thing anybody should be doing. Ammonia prices don’t have to go up if demand goes up. Price increases are only one possible outcome of an increase in demand. The other option is an increase in supply. With sufficiently cheap electricity everything becomes affordable. When we deplete natural gas supplies ammonia will get more expensive. Food will also cost a lot more when farmland gets too hot to be productive. The last thing anyone should be doing is betting the food supply on scarce fossil fuel sources.
newsclues 2y ago
Anything to avoid banning bunker fuel, and forcing ship owners to spend more for diesel which is cleaner.
shallichange 2y ago
Why not sails? Wind. That stuff
- mulmen 2y ago
  They’d have to be huge and also need to get out of the way of overhead cranes. There’s some work being done in that direction but it’s never going to be a complete solution.
cyberax 2y ago
I never understood why shipping decided to deal with ammonia nonsense. It's dead-on-arrival, due to the complexity and danger of it. We already have a workable solution: liquid methane. It can be synthesized from captured CO2 about as cheaply as ammonia, and we can just use the fossil methane as a bridge for now. More importantly, there are whole fleets of methane-powered ships now. Methane has a higher global warming potential, but only if it leaks. And this can be minimized, especially once fossil fuel mining is phased out.
senectus1 2y ago
first ? https://zero.fortescue.com/en/case-studies/green-pioneer https://zero.fortescue.com/en/case-studies/green-pioneer I dont think so.
londons_explore 2y ago
> partnership restarted the project with a specially made gas turbine designed to run on ammonia. And that gas turbine can also run on many other fuels - LPG, LNG, gasoline, diesel, etc. My guess is this ship will do 1 run on ammonia for the press release, and then will run on LPG for the rest of its life for economic reasons. The original fuel cell design is far more picky about fuel sources and therefore wouldn't have had that possibility.
WhatsTheBigIdea 2y ago
Alternative fuel? yes. Greenhouse gas solution? no. Ammonia will (and does) leak into the environment where it becomes a part of the natural nitrogen cycle. The end result of the natural nitrogen cycle is N2O (aka laughing gas) which is a greenhouse gas 250-350x more powerful than CO2. Running the world on ammonia, even if logistically possible, will likely accelerate climate change, not slow it.
LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
Meanwhile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Saad%C3%A9-class_container_ship#Specifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Saad%C3%A9-class_conta... <- CMA-CGM LNG-powered https://www.cma-cgm.com/news/5012/maiden-call-of-cma-cgm-iron-in-singapore-first-delivery-of-a-south-korean-built-series-of-12-new-generation-dual-fuel-methanol-13-000-teu-vessel https://www.cma-cgm.com/news/5012/maiden-call-of-cma-cgm-iro... Ammonia too complicated?
giantg2 2y ago
Interesting. This one says it's a gas turbine, but other articles I've seen say there's also two stroke engines for shipping. I was wondering how this would be petroleum free as a 2 stroke. It makes sense that the turbine could be with sealed bearings.

134 points by pseudolus 2y ago

imchillyb 2y ago

What is the environmental impact of this ship sinking, leaking, or even dumping the ammonia payload?

pbmonster 2y ago
It dissolves in water quickly. Then big algae bloom, lots of dead fish. Mammals handle it OK. Ammonia can directly act as a nitrogen fertilizer, and plants love that. Mammals quickly convert it in their livers, but aquatic animals can't handle having it in their bloodstream and die quickly from it. High concentrations can overwhelm the liver, and then its toxic even for humans. Pure, ammonia vapor is incredibly toxic and even tiny concentrations are bad for the mucosa.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  I believe in much of the ocean nitrogen is not the limiting nutrient for plant growth, because while it can be fixed from dissolved molecular nitrogen, there's no direct major source of things like phosphorus or iron. Things would be different near coasts where sediment is washing in.
- giardini 2y ago
  What could possibly go wrong? pbmonster says "Pure, ammonia vapor is incredibly toxic and even tiny concentrations are bad for the mucosa." As in "dissolves the mucosa"! The 1976 ammonia truck disaster: In 1976 a truck of ammonia gas ruptured on a freeway interchange in Houston. The scene was akin to early World War I gas warfare. The Houston Post newspaper office building was about a half mile from the spill. The ammonia cloud rolled over and past the building in minutes but quick-witted building engineers shut down the air circulation system so no one inside was hurt. The greenery around the building and area was scorched brown by the passing heavier-than-air ammonia cloud: "How A Deadly Cloud In Houston Decades Ago Led To ‘Shelter-In-Place’ (good pic of the initial truck explosion):" https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2016/04/25/144853/how-a-deadly-cloud-in-houston-decades-ago-led-to-shelter-in-place/ https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2016/04/25/... Film footage of the scene and victims - moderately gory: "The worst accident in Houston history: The 1976 ammonia truck disaster": https://abc13.com/ammonia-truck-disaster-houston/1332062/ https://abc13.com/ammonia-truck-disaster-houston/1332062/
xoa 2y ago
According to a quick search, Viking Energy apparently will have a 220 cubic meter tank, which would equate to 220000 liters of ammonia. In aquaculture apparently ammonia reaches an almost universally high damage/lethal combination for fish (mammals can handle significant amounts thanks to a specific enzyme to handle build up the blood, fish have to just excrete it fast enough) and other non-mammals at around 2mg/L. Assuming all 220000 L of ammonia went 100% into the water and dissolved completely times 0.769 kg/m^3 density at STP, it'd be at the lethal level when dissolved in less than 84590000 liters of water, which equates to a cube approximately 44 meters per side or a sphere with a radius of 27 meters. Even with a 10x margin (since apparently some organisms can suffer damage even if not death from 0.2mg/L) that's nothing for an ocean going ship in general. So at least at first glance to me that looks very favorable vs the bunker fuel ships normally use, which is also horribly toxic but also floats and is much harder for creatures to get rid of.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  > times 0.769 kg/m^3 density at STP The ship's tank is not at STP. The ammonia inside it is pressurized into a liquid.
  - yread 2y ago
    Indeed it's more like 600 kg/m3, so, about 1000 times more ammonia. So, the cube would be about 10 times bigger (side of 400m). https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/ammonia-liquid-thermal-properties-d_1765.html https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/ammonia-liquid-thermal-pr...
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      Yep. You just immediately killed all life in a volume larger than the ship, and since diffusion on volumes that large take time, created a plume of toxic water that will wander for many minutes before dissolving well enough. Not a big deal on the ocean. And yeah, better than an oil spill.
timewizard 2y ago
You put people on a ship across the ocean and they're going to dump their waste tanks into it. They're going to spill and leak industrial chemicals into it. There's a certain amount of loss that occurs during shipping and additional packaging that goes into securing it. You're better off building things closer to where they are needed rather than relying on shipping for cheap consumer goods. Bunker fuel oil, LNG, ammonia, it's all putting the cart before the horse.

_aavaa_ 2y ago

Hopefully this ship of fools runs aground before it kills its whole crew with the first, inevitable, leak.

pbmonster 2y ago
Once corrosion is under control, is that danger actually higher than the risk of a natural gas fuel system leaking and killing a whole crew? Both gases are lighter than air, both form explosive mixtures with air (but ammonia-air mixture has much slower flame speed and slower pressure rise than natural gas - for which it makes up with its much higher toxicity). In the end, gas leaks are always bad. But at least you can easily smell an ammonia leak.
- iamthemonster 2y ago
  No the ammonia toxicity hazard is incredibly severe, it immediately burns your lungs and you die by choking on your own blood as your lungs dissolve. Whereas with natural gas leaks you can reduce the likelihood of ignition by intrinsically safe instrumentation and electrical components. In both cases, gas detection and automated shutdown and sectionalisation helps significantly.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  > But at least you can easily smell an ammonia leak. IIRC, they add a very nasty smelling chemical to LNG so that leaks are evident before they get explosive. In the case of ammonia, the additive is not really needed, and the toxicity being much higher makes me think that, by the time you realize you are breathing ammonia, it's already too late.
  - pbmonster 2y ago
    I know they add a thiol (sulfur compound that smells like rotten eggs) to the city mains for cooking/heating gas. Would be interesting to know if its commonly added to industrial LNG. Because we burn a lot of that - even if you only add a few ppm thiol to natural gas, that's a whole lot of sulfur being burnt...

InDubioProRubio 2y ago

Maybe try hydrogen? Or beavers? Have it driven by environmental movements, you finance selective steered into being maximum annoying?

fredgrott 2y ago
it does seem safer see https://blog.ballard.com/marine/worlds-first-liquid-powered-hydrogen-ship-mf-hydra-is-powered-by-ballards-fuel-cells https://blog.ballard.com/marine/worlds-first-liquid-powered-...
Climatebamb 2y ago
[flagged]
j33zusjuice 2y ago
Seems you left out a whole bunch of words because that comment doesn’t make any sense.
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago
  It makes, when you consider, that its all just "measures" by the oil industry to stop society from steering away from it. They either invest in DoA technologies or technologies that allow for greenwashing of fossil fuels. Beavers? Lets say you want to steer the population away form reasonable environmental goals like high speed rail or public transport (which has to cost something to keep bums out). You then pick some mad-sob with a insane initiative like "rewild skunks in the inner city parks" and pump that up with donated millions. Result, that mad- as a hatter, propagates his "initiative", riles up the masses and his co-goals - which may include high-speed rail get discredited.

rdtsc 2y ago

> Ammonia is toxic, explosive, and corrosive Someone I knew died from inhaling ammonia vapors after the system wasn’t purged properly and they opened a valve. Having a whole ship fueled by it seems like insanity when there is fuel that does to that to a person.

patates 2y ago
I'm sorry for your loss. Ammonia is the the thing that our body happily spends its precious water in more-than-enough amounts just to make sure it's gotten rid of. The only mammal that optimized that process is camels if I'm not misremembering. I also found it a bit crazy to fill a ship with it.
- 38 2y ago
  [flagged]
GJim 2y ago
Petrol is also insanely dangerous, yet we seem to manage.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Petro is practically safe compared to ammonia. Petro only explodes in specific air-fuel situations. The vapors are harmful, but not deadly in small quantities like ammonia is. Calling petro "insanely dangerous" is wrong. Petro is the most dangerous substance normal people handle in quantity, but we allow normal people to handle it in quantity because it while it isn't safe it isn't all that dangerous. Your standard household ammonia CONCENTRATE people sometimes use for cleaning is 99% water - you dilute it significantly for use. Even used correctly it is nasty stuff.
  - unwind 2y ago
    Petro (sic) only explodes in specific air-fuel situations That seems to be true for ammonia as well, at least according to the Wikipedia page's [1] section on Combustion: Ammonia does not burn readily or sustain combustion, except under narrow fuel-to-air mixtures of 15–28% ammonia by volume in air. That doesn't sound too horrible, it feels like gasoline/petrol is easier to combust (although I know it's the fumes that are actually flammable). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#Combustion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#Combustion

preisschild 2y ago

I wonder what environmentally-friendly propulsion system wins in the next decade for large ships: ammonia, hydrogen or nuclear reactors.

rich_sasha 2y ago
I suppose there's more, ethanol and methanol, synthetic natural gas. It is a shame petroleum-based fuels are so damn convenient.
iamthemonster 2y ago
none of those three, but I expect a combination of methanol, biodiesel and (only for near-shore and inland shipping) battery electric.
McDyver 2y ago
Or wind https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanbird https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanbird
- preisschild 2y ago
  Might have niche-applications, but a nuclear-powered container ship can do many more trips in the time it takes this to do 1 trip.
- j33zusjuice 2y ago
  We’ve come full circle.
speed_spread 2y ago
I propose submerged stainless steel cables pulling boats from underneath, powered by deep geothermal converters.
dredmorbius 2y ago
Synthetic hydrocarbon analogues. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43344373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43344373>

iamthemonster 2y ago

2026 is still a very ambitious startup date for this. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has only just approved interim guidelines for the addition of ammonia to the IGF Code (use of gaseous fuels). There's a lot to it, but this is a good high level overview: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/imo-interim-guidelines-safety-ships-using-ammonia-fuel-muammer-akturk-n2e0c/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/imo-interim-guidelines-safety... A lot of commentators believe that since ammonia is less inherently safe it will inevitably be less safe in practice. I am not convinced by that argument, and in general if there's a strong enough business driver then anything can be made safe. But what really swung me against the idea of ammonia as a shipping fuel is that the expected cost is barely any better than methanol (which is much more inherently safe) and is more expensive than biodiesel. The shipping companies have a real conundrum on their hands - do they go ammonia, methanol, stick with diesel, or try to get near-shore and inland shipping onto electric? Ammonia-fuelled ships have to be THOROUGHLY designed from the ground up specifically for ammonia use; you have to be 100% committed to go down that path. Whereas biodiesel can simply be dropped in (you can of course choose to fill up with a biodiesel blend today, but nobody does because you can put emissions into the atmosphere for free). Unlike solar cells or battery cells, I don't really see much chance for 'learning rates' and technology improvement to drastically drive down the cost of green ammonia. Falling electrolyser costs are nice, but they're only a portion of the process plant CAPEX, and the cost of the green electricity dominates the economics over the process plant CAPEX anyway. You could get electrolysers for free and still be unable to make cheap green ammonia. So for green ammonia to get adopted, a strong 'carbon price' needs to be in place, and I think that same strong carbon price would make biodiesel competitive.

rbanffy 2y ago
> So for green ammonia to get adopted, a strong 'carbon price' needs to be in place, and I think that same strong carbon price would make biodiesel competitive. And next to ammonia, biodiesel is almost drinkable.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  And there's the entire CO versus NO or NO2. But well, the silver lining is that the combustion products literally burning your lungs means that you won't unknowingly lock yourself in a room with a running engine.

ZeroGravitas 2y ago

Ammonia tankers seem a good test bed for this tech as they already carry Ammonia and dock in places that handle it. Other fuel cell based technologies seem to be working on scaling up, they can supplement electrical generation for crew before working with the existing generators with the aim to eventually replace them. Like trains, ships get technical benefits from being hybrid. This makes it relatively easy then to be made more hybrid, plug into shore power when available, add some batteries and, solar panels etc. There's no one easy fix but lots of little ones. The most interesting one I saw discussed is contracts that share the blame when delays happen. Previously ships would race to their destination and then wait around because if they missed a connection they would be held responsible. Now they can all go at slower, more efficient just-in-time speeds and the costs of the occasional missed deadline are amortized. With fuel savings they all come out ahead so it's a win-win.

SamPatt 2y ago

>“Twenty or thirty years ago, the shipping industry made a major shift to natural gas, believing it was the fuel of the future. Now, we know it wasn’t the right step,” says Prousalidis. This sentence confuses me. The shipping industry runs on natural gas? If so, why is there regret? My impression is that most systems using natural gas right now are in a good position. What am I missing here?

sidewndr46 2y ago
Almost all shipping by weight is done by burning bunker. By ship quantity, most ships probably actually just burn some variant of diesel. Some do run off natural gas. If you read through industry journals, you can find some point in the late 80s where the industry journals were all reporting about how all ships would need to go back to burning coal soon. I'm pretty sure this was just a fantasy that shipbuilders paid the journals to push as it would mean the opportunity to sell lots of new ships. I doubt the statement you quoted is grounded in any reality.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  I'd thought that several notable ships had been refitted to burn petrol, though I can't find the references I'd had in mind. (I'd think that petrol itself would be a less desirable fuel for some of the same reasons as ammonia: it's heavier-than air, sinks, and burns rapidly or explodes when vapours combine with air.)
looofooo0 2y ago
Batteries are most likely the most feasible option for many applications soon.
iamthemonster 2y ago
Liquefied Natural Gas was expected to be a lower-emission alternative fuel compared to bunker fuel. The proportion of LNG fuelled cargo tankers out there right now is about 2% but for new orders, about 30% of them are LNG fuelled so that small percentage will grow rapidly. However, for United States LNG in particular, the LNG production chain actually has very high emissions of methane. The industry has been fighting to keep that as unclear and unquantified as absolutely possible, and there's a good reason for that - when you take into account the methane emissions along the whole value chain from drilling through liquefaction, LNG's climate impact (in terms of global warming) is no better than coal. I'm sure it's beneficial compared to bunker fuel, but the climate benefit is much much slimmer than first believed.

keepamovin 2y ago

I misread, and really hoped, it was “first ammonia-fueled sheep hits a snag.” Boy that was gonna be a fascinating article! Still read this one though probably, seems interesting.

caycep 2y ago

Ammonia...this ship could be run on poop...

wpollock 2y ago
Bad news, men. The captain says we're behind schedule so beans for supper again!
npteljes 2y ago
Ammonia is in peepee, not poopoo. Maybe you are thinking methane, which is present in farts.
- caycep 2y ago
  I think it is in both but you need bacteria for the poop. but that's 2 sources of fuel instead of one!

cratermoon 2y ago

Reading about ammonia as a ship fuel gives me strong Ignition! vibes. For those not familiar, Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Drury Clark goes into detail about all the different things aerospace engineers have tried, including some incredibly dangerous combinations. The conclusion for many of the tests is usually along this lines of "this makes a very powerful, lightweight rocket, but the tendency towards disastrous results makes it impractical".

jnmandal 2y ago

Isn't the energy return on investment for this extremely low and/or negative? Am I missing something here?

api 2y ago
It's a way of storing energy. You use solar, nuclear, wind, etc. to make ammonia.
- jnmandal 2y ago
  I get that but isn't it like 100x more efficient to be storing that energy to offset intermittency/base power or selling that ammonium as fertilizer to offset hydrocarbon-based haber bosch ferts?
  - api 2y ago
    There are more efficient ways, but batteries are heavy and still not as compact as liquid fuels. If you want to run ships on non-carbon-based energy making a liquid fuel is one way that can work today.

lupusreal 2y ago

It doesn't seem like a great idea to use what is essentially fertilizer as a fuel. Surely this new demand will drive up the price of fertilizer.

p1mrx 2y ago
The idea is to make ammonia from electricity. If this scales up, it could lead to electric fertilizer, and greatly reduce agricultural carbon emissions.
NotYourLawyer 2y ago
Maybe. But longer term, new uses for ammonia might well lead to more efficient and widespread production.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  Ammonia is not some obscure chemical until now neglected by science and industry, the problem of producing ammonia has already received the attention of several generations of the greatest minds humanity has. Adding yet more commercial demand for what is already very much in demand isn't going to help in any meaningful way. It's just going to drive up the price of fertilizer, and therefore the price of food. As for doing it with electricity; that will never be more cost effective than doing it with natural gas. If you want to reduce carbon emissions, turn your attention to other industries. Fucking with the global food supply is the last thing anybody should be doing.
  - mulmen 2y ago
    > the problem of producing ammonia has already received the attention of several generations of the greatest minds humanity has. Sure but they were working with the constraints of the times. Renewable electricity generation doesn’t have the same level of maturity and it’s already surpassing fossil options with tons of room to scale. > that will never be more cost effective than doing it with natural gas. We have an effectively infinite supply of electricity but a finite supply of natural gas. The trends are clear. Electricity is going to continue to get cheaper essentially forever and fossil fuels will continue to become more scarce and thus expensive until it's not economical to use them. You just have to draw the timeline long enough and electricity becomes the cheaper option for ammonium production and renewable electricity becomes the cheapest electricity source. > Fucking with the global food supply is the last thing anybody should be doing. Ammonia prices don’t have to go up if demand goes up. Price increases are only one possible outcome of an increase in demand. The other option is an increase in supply. With sufficiently cheap electricity everything becomes affordable. When we deplete natural gas supplies ammonia will get more expensive. Food will also cost a lot more when farmland gets too hot to be productive. The last thing anyone should be doing is betting the food supply on scarce fossil fuel sources.

newsclues 2y ago

Anything to avoid banning bunker fuel, and forcing ship owners to spend more for diesel which is cleaner.

shallichange 2y ago

Why not sails? Wind. That stuff

mulmen 2y ago
They’d have to be huge and also need to get out of the way of overhead cranes. There’s some work being done in that direction but it’s never going to be a complete solution.

cyberax 2y ago

I never understood why shipping decided to deal with ammonia nonsense. It's dead-on-arrival, due to the complexity and danger of it. We already have a workable solution: liquid methane. It can be synthesized from captured CO2 about as cheaply as ammonia, and we can just use the fossil methane as a bridge for now. More importantly, there are whole fleets of methane-powered ships now. Methane has a higher global warming potential, but only if it leaks. And this can be minimized, especially once fossil fuel mining is phased out.

senectus1 2y ago

first ? https://zero.fortescue.com/en/case-studies/green-pioneer https://zero.fortescue.com/en/case-studies/green-pioneer I dont think so.

londons_explore 2y ago

> partnership restarted the project with a specially made gas turbine designed to run on ammonia. And that gas turbine can also run on many other fuels - LPG, LNG, gasoline, diesel, etc. My guess is this ship will do 1 run on ammonia for the press release, and then will run on LPG for the rest of its life for economic reasons. The original fuel cell design is far more picky about fuel sources and therefore wouldn't have had that possibility.

WhatsTheBigIdea 2y ago

Alternative fuel? yes. Greenhouse gas solution? no. Ammonia will (and does) leak into the environment where it becomes a part of the natural nitrogen cycle. The end result of the natural nitrogen cycle is N2O (aka laughing gas) which is a greenhouse gas 250-350x more powerful than CO2. Running the world on ammonia, even if logistically possible, will likely accelerate climate change, not slow it.

LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago

Meanwhile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Saad%C3%A9-class_container_ship#Specifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Saad%C3%A9-class_conta... <- CMA-CGM LNG-powered https://www.cma-cgm.com/news/5012/maiden-call-of-cma-cgm-iron-in-singapore-first-delivery-of-a-south-korean-built-series-of-12-new-generation-dual-fuel-methanol-13-000-teu-vessel https://www.cma-cgm.com/news/5012/maiden-call-of-cma-cgm-iro... Ammonia too complicated?

giantg2 2y ago

Interesting. This one says it's a gas turbine, but other articles I've seen say there's also two stroke engines for shipping. I was wondering how this would be petroleum free as a 2 stroke. It makes sense that the turbine could be with sealed bearings.