GE's Hydrogen Calculator

[OVERKILL]

Well getting the gallon of gas to your car, takes a lot of energy, and almost all the energy inputs to make gasoline at the pump from crude oil in the ground, are also fossil fuels. So how efficient is that process? Then your car only uses 30% of energy in the fuel for motion?

Wind power is the energy source, pumping electricity out of the air. The trick is to get that energy to where its needed(Germany in this case). Some people with a few degrees thought that using hydrogen gas produced relatively cheaply in Newfoundland, to make liquid ammonia and ship it, is a practical way to do this?

I get that making liquid ammonia is inefficient, but wind has the advantage of being free and should be around forever, and using more of it doesn't effect the climate other than costs of installation. I don't think inefficiency is as much of a problem if the inputs are renewable and practically unlimited?
I think fossil fuels are also inefficient, but they are limited, and using them is creating much more serious problems than renewables?

Wind turbines are manufactured, transported and installed with fossil fuels. They are also maintained and lubricated with fossil fuels. Yes, the lifecycle emissions of a wind turbine are lower than for say a gas plant, but there are still considerable embedded emissions, like there are for any source.

There's a reason China is producing PV with mine-to-mouth coal and not PV.

 

[IndyIan]

Wind turbine prices have pretty much plateau'd at this juncture. While I expect wind CF in Newfoundland to be higher than Ontario, it is nowhere near the cheapest source of electricity on the planet, which is currently fully depreciated reservoir hydro, followed by fully depreciated nuclear.

You are looking for EROI, or EROEI, Energy Return on (Energy) Invested. Fossil fuels are net positive, while these projects would be net negative, since hydrogen is effectively a storage medium.

The one Newfoundland project, which is slated to have 3.5GW of wind and 150MW of solar to produce between 950,000 and 1 million tons of ammonia per year is slated to cost $12 billion CDN:
https://www.windpowermonthly.com/ar...anadas-first-commercial-green-ammonia-project

Assuming a 20 year payback period, 16% CF for the solar and 50% CF for the wind, just to recoup the capital cost, so not factoring in OPEX, we have 15.6 million MWh over which to spread that $12 billion, or 311.33 million MWh over 20 years. That's $38.50/MWh right out of the gate for capital cost, not including taxes, staffing, shipping, interest on borrowing...etc. to cover your $600 million year capital payback.

So, that's your base input cost, so that's baked into the cost of your ammonia. If we assume the high end of the ammonia production at 1 million tons per year, that's $600/ton.

If we look at the ammonia price index:
https://businessanalytiq.com/procurementanalytics/index/ammonia-price-index/

Ammonia is currently $0.48/KG in North America, or $480/ton.

So, we are already more expensive than the market price for ammonia and we haven't factored in operating costs, loan interest, property taxes...etc.

The math on these projects doesn't work unless companies are willing to pay a rather massive premium for "Green" ammonia, which of course will drive up electricity prices when you run all this math backwards and include that stack of losses.

It's not a reasonable source, the inputs are simply too great compared to the outputs to make it practical. The investment required to make it at scale, both in terms of generating resources and transport is staggering, it's like re-inventing the entire fossil fuel supply chain all over again, but with considerable added complexity due to having to handle a product that is far more difficult to store and transport and has far higher input energy costs.

Hydrogen, as a storage medium, is awful. The only reason it gets any traction is because of the ability reuse some FF technology and infrastructure (like GT's for example) and of course it's more portable than batteries. We'd be further ahead looking at carbon neutral synfuels which lack these issues and can reuse all of our existing infrastructure.

I think the point of ammonia, was to use hydrogen gas at the source and not have to liquify or transport gas far...

Also what is the energy input or invested in renewables? Cost of making them, then what, maintenance? A strategy for the oil sands was to make a nuclear power plant to make extraction and processing emit less CO2 and be more profitable? Yes you get more energy than you put in, but its still burning a finite resource, and creating emissions.

In Europe, Ammonia is almost 1/3 more than here, so the say $800/ton total cost of production and shipping with much much less fossil fuel inputs, may have seem like a really good deal, looking back 200 years from now, if the green house effect raises sea levels and makes large areas uninhabitable due to heat....

 

[kschachn]

This. Hydrogen is tightly bonded to other molecules in nature. There aren't any hydrogen reserves like there is for crude oil. Alot of the hydrogen that is free floating is in the upper atmosphere. Jupiter is about the only planet that has so much hydrogen that you can literally suck it out of the atmosphere and compress it. Unfortunately Jupiter doesn't have any solid ground, and has 1300 mph winds which would make for a really breezy afternoon.

There’s a large source that’s closer than Jupiter but it has some issues too

 

[kschachn]

Well getting the gallon of gas to your car, takes a lot of energy, and almost all the energy inputs to make gasoline at the pump from crude oil in the ground, are also fossil fuels. So how efficient is that process? Then your car only uses 30% of energy in the fuel for motion?

Wind power is the energy source, pumping electricity out of the air. The trick is to get that energy to where its needed(Germany in this case). Some people with a few degrees thought that using hydrogen gas produced relatively cheaply in Newfoundland, to make liquid ammonia and ship it, is a practical way to do this?

I get that making liquid ammonia is inefficient, but wind has the advantage of being free and should be around forever, and using more of it doesn't effect the climate other than costs of installation. I don't think inefficiency is as much of a problem if the inputs are renewable and practically unlimited?
I think fossil fuels are also inefficient, but they are limited, and using them is creating much more serious problems than renewables?

No one, ever, should use liquid ammonia for a motor vehicle fuel.

And yes the thermodynamics (“efficiency” as you call it) is indeed the problem. Or it should be unless politics trumps science.

 

[kschachn]

Wind turbine prices have pretty much plateau'd at this juncture. While I expect wind CF in Newfoundland to be higher than Ontario, it is nowhere near the cheapest source of electricity on the planet, which is currently fully depreciated reservoir hydro, followed by fully depreciated nuclear.

You are looking for EROI, or EROEI, Energy Return on (Energy) Invested. Fossil fuels are net positive, while these projects would be net negative, since hydrogen is effectively a storage medium.

The one Newfoundland project, which is slated to have 3.5GW of wind and 150MW of solar to produce between 950,000 and 1 million tons of ammonia per year is slated to cost $12 billion CDN:
https://www.windpowermonthly.com/ar...anadas-first-commercial-green-ammonia-project

Assuming a 20 year payback period, 16% CF for the solar and 50% CF for the wind, just to recoup the capital cost, so not factoring in OPEX, we have 15.6 million MWh over which to spread that $12 billion, or 311.33 million MWh over 20 years. That's $38.50/MWh right out of the gate for capital cost, not including taxes, staffing, shipping, interest on borrowing...etc. to cover your $600 million year capital payback.

So, that's your base input cost, so that's baked into the cost of your ammonia. If we assume the high end of the ammonia production at 1 million tons per year, that's $600/ton.

If we look at the ammonia price index:
https://businessanalytiq.com/procurementanalytics/index/ammonia-price-index/

Ammonia is currently $0.48/KG in North America, or $480/ton.

So, we are already more expensive than the market price for ammonia and we haven't factored in operating costs, loan interest, property taxes...etc.

The math on these projects doesn't work unless companies are willing to pay a rather massive premium for "Green" ammonia, which of course will drive up electricity prices when you run all this math backwards and include that stack of losses.

It's not a reasonable source, the inputs are simply too great compared to the outputs to make it practical. The investment required to make it at scale, both in terms of generating resources and transport is staggering, it's like re-inventing the entire fossil fuel supply chain all over again, but with considerable added complexity due to having to handle a product that is far more difficult to store and transport and has far higher input energy costs.

Hydrogen, as a storage medium, is awful. The only reason it gets any traction is because of the ability reuse some FF technology and infrastructure (like GT's for example) and of course it's more portable than batteries. We'd be further ahead looking at carbon neutral synfuels which lack these issues and can reuse all of our existing infrastructure.

Ammonia has better energy density due to the fact that it can be liquified at ambient temperature. However, it’s extremely poisonous due to how it coordinates with hemoglobin, besides being highly corrosive in mucus tissue and the lungs. Nobody in their right mind would use this in a moving vehicle that has a rather high probability of being involved in an accident and possible fire.

People were killed in their sleep years ago when NH3 was used as a refrigerant in residential refrigerators.

Yes you want a liquid fuel for energy density but this isn’t the right one.

 

[OVERKILL]

I think the point of ammonia, was to use hydrogen gas at the source and not have to liquify or transport gas far...

Right, but it adds yet another stage of loss to an already net-negative process. It drives down EROI even further. That's not good for viability.

Also what is the energy input or invested in renewables? Cost of making them, then what, maintenance? A strategy for the oil sands was to make a nuclear power plant to make extraction and processing emit less CO2 and be more profitable? Yes you get more energy than you put in, but its still burning a finite resource, and creating emissions.

See the EROI charts I posted. Nukes have extremely high EROI's, so that makes sense. A CANDU fuel bundle produces 20,000x more energy than a comparable mass of fossil fuels. This would greatly decrease oil sands net emissions. We will still use FF's well into the future, even if we mostly stop burning them for powergen, for things like plastics and the like.

In Europe, Ammonia is almost 1/3 more than here, so the say $800/ton total cost of production and shipping with much much less fossil fuel inputs, may have seem like a really good deal, looking back 200 years from now, if the green house effect raises sea levels and makes large areas uninhabitable due to heat....

I'm thinking it's going to end up at more like $1,200/ton, since the hydrogen production and conversion system has considerable OPEX and that base number is just for CAPEX and doesn't including borrowing costs. But we don't currently burn ammonia for power production, so how that looks from a per kWh cost perspective is the real question, if it's producing $0.40/kWh electricity, it's a non-starter.

Everything is economics. We can already produce carbon neutral diesel, gasoline, methane...etc. It's not pursued because it's more expensive than the traditional methods. This is also why steam methane reformation dominates global hydrogen production, it's cheaper than electrolysis.

The ammonia fuel cycle also has challenges. Initial approaches have involved decomposing the ammonia to release the hydrogen, then burning the hydrogen (so then you have to add the math in the OP to this, to help with envisioning scale). Mitsubishi is working on direct firing of ammonia in gas turbines, but this produces NOx, which of course are undesirable and requires some sort of aftertreatment (like SCR) to capture.

 

[PandaBear]

No one, ever, should use liquid ammonia for a motor vehicle fuel.

And yes the thermodynamics (“efficiency” as you call it) is indeed the problem. Or it should be unless politics trumps science.

Liquid ammonia is just a front to white wash the project. They will end up in the open market and turn into fertilizer instead of fuel and back into electricity.

I can see that being warm and fuzzy to people who refuse to understand (like my ex-wife who insist on teaching our kids that EV is better for the environment), but often times replacing something else that also use fossil fuel instead is a better choice for environment.

Like instead of turning natural gas power plant emission into algae and into algae fuel, just feed the algae to fish as food and eat the fish.

 

[JTK]

How cold is hydrogen stored in tanks

-253degC. Our storage tanks are vacuum insulated. Basically a tank within a tank, with a vacuum pulled on the annular space. The annular space is also packed with microsil, a powder type insulation. The product is stored at low pressure. ~10-15psig. These tanks are very efficient and will hold product with very minimal boil off for many months. The vapor that does boil off is reclaimed back into the plant or vented.

The only reason we liquify H2 is it's easier to ship "in bulk" that way to the countless customers who need pure H2 for their processes.

 

[PandaBear]

Duplicate post, deleted.

 

[y_p_w]

Ammonia has better energy density due to the fact that it can be liquified at ambient temperature. However, it’s extremely poisonous due to how it coordinates with hemoglobin, besides being highly corrosive in mucus tissue and the lungs. Nobody in their right mind would use this in a moving vehicle that has a rather high probability of being involved in an accident and possible fire.

People were killed in their sleep years ago when NH3 was used as a refrigerant in residential refrigerators.

Yes you want a liquid fuel for energy density but this isn’t the right one.

There was controversy over a local ice rink that used an ammonia refrigeration system. There was discussion of converting to something like HFC, but the cost was apparently prohibitive. It was taken out, but operating with a temporary system wasn't viable, and the building was repurposed as a sporting goods store. And the place was legendary as an Olympic size rink where several Olympic skating champions had trained.

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BERKELEY-After-66-years-the-ice-will-melt-at-2655798.php​

Berkeley Iceland will close its doors for good nearly 70 years after the first skaters took to the ice.​

​

The owners of the ice rink announced Thursday that the business was no longer viable, given city demands to upgrade its aging refrigeration system and the need to maintain the 1940s building. The rink's last day of operation will be March 31.​

*******​

The demise of Iceland began in 2004, when the Berkeley Fire Department identified serious health hazards related to the rink's refrigeration system, which uses ammonia.​

​

A temporary system was brought in, but it was expensive, and in the end a permanent replacement was simply not an option given the cost, Wescott said.​

 

[Shannow]

People were killed in their sleep years ago when NH3 was used as a refrigerant in residential refrigerators.

Yes you want a liquid fuel for energy density but this isn’t the right one.

I agree...the power stations in my state all had 40 tonnes of anhydrous liquid ammonia stored on site. I got rid of it from two stations, replacing it with 30% aqueous. Possibility with anhydrous was not just wiping out the site, but neighbouring towns...and that was 40 tonnes, not what's being talked about.

I ran an evacuation drill of a transport tanker missing a corner coing into the station, and spouting a small leak...the operators who responded were wuite shaken when they worked out wind directions, it runnung down drains and into tunnels etc. (I DID have the crash at the evacuation point...to force those decisions).

I shudder at the thought of hudreds of tonnes stored anywhere, let alone in the back of a car.

As to assertions that we'd start with windmills if we were to do it again...we did, while it was useful for the work we needed.

Energy has always been needed, we did it with slaves, beasts of burden etc. but then fossil fuels allowed us to use more eergy than we could imagine, and is continually lifting people out of poverty...and once you get above about 5k GDP per preson, they start to care about things like the environment, because they don't have to scavenge stick to cook with...look at what happened in Europe a few year back, energy got dcarce, they started cutting trees down.

Speaking of...take the equivalent power output of a business card slice of a nuke, coal takes two to make the same. Renewables...7 square metres...it's that dilute.

And it runs intermittently...so you have to store it (and nobody IS, they are relying on dirty neighbours mostly).

To replace 1,000MW of thermal...just for a day, you need 4,800 MW of solar (nealry double in winter), and 18,000MWh of batteries...to run 24 hours, not a wind drought or any other such natural event.

and the argument that because it's intermittent, we can waste it on things like hydrogen is beyond belief.

We need energy SOURCES, not harvesting sparse and diverse intermittents.

 

[Shannow]

didnt quote right

 

[Shannow]

Liquid ammonia is just a front to white wash the project. They will end up in the open market and turn into fertilizer instead of fuel and back into electricity.

https://www.ihi.co.jp/en/sustainable/environmental/climatechange/ammonia_energy/