[HN Gopher] First ammonia-fueled ship hits a snag
___________________________________________________________________
First ammonia-fueled ship hits a snag
Author : pseudolus
Score : 131 points
Date : 2025-03-12 11:24 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Hopefully this ship of fools runs aground before it kills its
| whole crew with the first, inevitable, leak.
| pbmonster wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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...
| bluGill wrote:
| If you inhale natural gas it is only deadly (it can cause
| other problems that are treatable) when it displaces enough
| oxygen. In open air you are hopefully okay because there is
| still enough oxygen that you can breath. Ammonia is deadly
| when inhaled in small quantities. I wouldn't want either, but
| ammonia is worse if you must choose.
|
| I'm not sure how likely fire is in case of a leak.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Hopefully not.
|
| Like anything else, risks can be mitigated.
|
| The main concern for me is at dockside where there are lots of
| people nearby. Ideally I think they'd "lock down" and
| depressurise the ammonia system (except the storage tank) when
| close to port, and only bring it online when out at sea and far
| from population.
|
| Also the refuelling process seems a bit risky. But these things
| are already quite routine; ammonia is already a large-volume
| industrial commodity with well-developed controls.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Risks can be mitigated. But the first step is _always_
| eliminating the hazardous material if possible.
|
| And many options exists that are less inherently dangerous
| than ammonia. Like methanol. At least it's a liquid and not
| nearly as bad.
|
| But ammonia is chosen as a predatory delay strategy. They
| build the engines to be dual fuel (ammonia and methane) and
| then feign surprise when they have to run it on methane since
| the ammonia supply chain "isn't ready yet" and the prices
| "need to come down a bit".
| M_bara wrote:
| If you think this is bad, then the chemicals used in rocketry -
| read the book ignition [1] - will have you whimpering in a
| corner. As with any system, risks can be identified and
| controlled and operationalised - Gasoline has its risks, so
| does Chlorine trifluoride [2]. Yet both are wildly different
| and are used in day to day operations.
|
| 1.
| https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_trifluoride
| j33zusjuice wrote:
| I think that's not a good comparison. I think we generally
| accept that leaving the planet is inherently riskier than
| traveling on it. You have to generate enough energy to exit
| the atmosphere, that's a shitload of energy. Of course it's
| dangerous. We've been sailing relatively safely for thousands
| of years, though.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Yes rocketry has made very dangerous chemical. And hydrazine
| is used in other fields too. But it's used because there
| aren't safer alternatives that are fit for purpose.
|
| Ammonia is being pushed as a predatory delay strategy. The
| article hints at this when it talks about the engines being
| dual-fuel (ammonia and methane). Given the massive price
| difference between green ammonia and methane it doesn't take
| a genius to know what their next message will be "our ships
| are ammonia ready, we will run them on methane until the
| ammonia supply chains are ready then we'll transition to it".
| Expect they have no intention of transitioning.
|
| The ships are "ammonia ready" in the same way my driveway is
| Ferrari ready. All that's missing is a lot of other people's
| money.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Hopefully this ship of fools runs aground
|
| Hopefully in a deserted rock in the middle of nowhere.
| thijson wrote:
| I read about some of the mitigation methods for an Ammonia
| fueled ship. If Ammonia is detected in the air, they start
| spraying water, like a sprinkler system. Ammonia has a high
| affinity to water.
|
| Ammonia is also lighter than air. When it is first released it
| is typically cold, so it sticks around until it warms up.
| Eventually it will float up into the atmosphere.
|
| One disadvantage is its lower energy density, you need to store
| twice as much of it as bunker oil.
|
| One advantage that I can see for Ammonia is that the
| ingredients it is composed of are readily available from the
| environment. Also, the fuel may be upgraded by cracking it into
| hydrogen and nitrogen using waste heat from the engine.
| Hydrogen gives a bigger pop in the cylinder, Ammonia doesn't
| burn as easily.
|
| One scenario I can think of is using nuclear power on a
| platform in the ocean, manufacturing the Ammonia, ships can
| come by and refuel there.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > readily available in the environment.
|
| That's a red herring. Getting hydrogen and nitrogen out of
| their naturally occurring forms (bonded to other things or to
| themselves) and turning it into ammonia is very energetically
| intensive.
|
| > One scenario I can think of is using nuclear power on a
| platform in the ocean, manufacturing the Ammonia, ships can
| come by and refuel there.
|
| I can think of many such scenarios if money is no object.
|
| But as you say, they currently run on bunker fuel which is
| essentially garbage. You have to pay people to take that of
| your hands. It is being ridiculous to think that they would
| switch, on their own dime, to burning ammonia. And green
| ammonia at that which is orders of magnitude more expensive.
|
| Who is willing to pay the resulting shipping costs?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Both hydrogen and carbon are _also_ readily available from
| the environment.
|
| Synthesizing hydrocarbon analogues of fossil fuels (petrol,
| kerosene, diesel, bunker fuel[1]) is _possible_ and has been
| theoretically demonstrated.[2] The problem is that it 's not
| _economically_ feasible, in large part due to structural
| market failures in the price of petroleum.[3]
|
| _Physical abundance_ of the constituent elements has little
| to do with _production costs_ of the resultant fuel.
|
| And hydrocarbons are vastly preferable to ammonia as fuels
| for all kinds of reasons: energy density, noncorrosive
| nature,[4] non-toxicity, convenience in general handling and
| storage, etc., etc., etc. So long as you're synthesizing
| fuels, make it the good stuff, not poison.
|
| ________________________________
|
| Notes:
|
| 1. That last is probably a non-starter. It's harder to
| synthesize longer-chain hydrocarbons, so far as I'm aware,
| and the primary driver of bunker oil for marine propulsion is
| that it's an otherwise low-value surplus from conventional
| petroleum production, even a large fraction of much
| extraction, e.g., Venezuela's very tarry petroleum,and
| Canada's tar sands. Lighter fractions would be easier to
| synthesize and more attractive as fuels.
|
| 2. For about 60 years, including research at Brookhaven
| National Labs, M.I.T., and the US Naval Research Lab, as well
| as with a Google moonshot project. A list of sources is here:
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28970111>
|
| 3. A deep topic, but given the fact that we're extracting
| petroleum at roughly 1 million times its rate of formation,
| and in a highly unsustainable fashion, there's a fair
| argument that petroleum ought to be priced about 1 million
| times its current market price. The economics of nonrenewable
| resource extraction is grossly irrational and divorced from
| physical and geological realities. On rates of formation,
| Jeffrey S. Dukes, "Burning Buried Sunshine" (2003)
| <https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/5212176.pdf> (PDF). Previous
| discussions: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&pr
| efix=false&qu...>
|
| 4. Indeed hydrocarbons are routinely used as lubricants and
| protectives for metals and other materials.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Maybe try hydrogen? Or beavers? Have it driven by environmental
| movements, you finance selective steered into being maximum
| annoying?
| fredgrott wrote:
| it does seem safer see
|
| https://blog.ballard.com/marine/worlds-first-liquid-powered-...
| j33zusjuice wrote:
| Seems you left out a whole bunch of words because that comment
| doesn't make any sense.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| 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.
| imchillyb wrote:
| What is the environmental impact of this ship sinking, leaking,
| or even dumping the ammonia payload?
| pbmonster wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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/.
| ..
|
| 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/
| xoa wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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-
| pr...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| GJim wrote:
| Petrol is also _insanely_ dangerous, yet we seem to manage.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| _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
| bluGill wrote:
| Maybe I wasn't clear. Ammonia is burning is not the
| worry. Ammonia in small quantities will kill you
| directly. no fire needed, it will kill you.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| To be clear, "small quantities" are in units of parts per
| million. 5ppm (0.0005%) and the room smells of ammonia,
| 25ppm means you should be wearing a respirator, 500 ppm
| (0.05%) can be lethal.
|
| Warning that 15% air-ammonia mixtures can burn is like
| warning that 100 kg of TNT could give you a concussion if
| it fell on your head. It's just not the concern at all.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| This risk factor sounds less like a normal chemical
| substance and more on the level of uranium
| adrianN wrote:
| It's comparable to carbon monoxide, except you can't
| smell that one.
| rdtsc wrote:
| Like the sibling comment mentioned it is nothing compared to
| ammonia. Yeah if you dump it somewhere in the ocean it might
| decompose with less damage to the environment but I was
| talking about immediate damage to humans.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Ships don't run on petrol, they run on various grades of
| bunker oil which is basically just really thin lubricating
| oil.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| You're thinking of something like regular fuel oil, like
| diesel or kerosene. Heavy fuel oil/bunker is very viscous,
| has to be heated to be pumped efficiently.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >You're thinking of something like regular fuel oil, like
| diesel or kerosene. Heavy fuel oil/bunker is very
| viscous, has to be heated to be pumped efficiently.
|
| I assure you I am not.
|
| I specifically compared it to lubricants to avoid a bunch
| of people mentally anchoring the discussion around
| diesel. Bunker C (the common one, also the most thick
| one) is basically on the automotive oil spectrum when it
| comes to viscosity.
|
| Go to 0:00 for room temp and 9:00 for operating temp
| (which is low enough for a plastic soda bottle and a bare
| hand to be appropriate).
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZZ591x0Ajs. Sure looks
| like 5w20 to me. Def thinner than gear oils and any
| comparison to 000 grease or roofing tar on a hot day is
| laughable. Bunker fuel is solidly on the oil spectrum.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| > very viscous > I assure you I'm not
|
| > bunker fuel is solidity
|
| You seems to be knowledgeable in that domain and has
| something interesting to share but I don't understand
| your point. What is the scale 0.00-9.00 ? What is the
| preside point you don't agree with GP? Please EMLI5.
| scrlk wrote:
| > What is the scale 0.00-9.00 ?
|
| Referring to the timestamps in the linked video (i.e.
| from the start of the video to 9 minutes).
| potato3732842 wrote:
| My point is that it's misleading to people who don't have
| reason to deal in liquid fuels to characterize bunker oil
| as thick or viscous when it's only thick relative to
| fuels (which are generally pretty thin, they mostly pour
| like water) despite not being particularly viscous
| absolutely.
|
| It's on the same order as most petroleum oils that people
| deal with and thinner than pretty much every petroleum
| product that is generally characterized as thick. Thinner
| grades of motor oil and most hydraulic oil is a bit
| thinner but thicker grades of motor oil, gear oils, all
| sorts of greases and tars are all more viscous. Bunker
| oil doesn't "need" to be heated to be pumped any more
| than motor oil does though heating it and the
| accompanying thinning does a lot to help with combustion
| which is why they do it (and then the rest of the systems
| that handle it get designed to take advantage of this)
| and invoking the fact that this is done kind of implies a
| comparison with the other petroleum products that get
| heated before being used and in most people's experience
| this is going to be products used to patch roofs and
| roads which is unhelpful because those don't even flow
| except at the highest extreme of naturally occurring
| temperatures. The only context in which bunker oil is
| particularly thick is if you're a fuel supplier and spend
| all day dealing in much less viscous stuff.
|
| I guess it's just pedantry at the end of the day.
|
| And yes, the numbers were timestamp references.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I've seen bunker fuel in a ship, and its consistency was
| best described as "tar-like". Mind, n=1 and uses may
| vary, but bunker fuel _can_ be exceedingly thick. All the
| more so on high-latitude routes with fuel tanks near the
| outer hull and cooled by ambient water temperatures near
| freezing.
|
| Decidedly thicker than automotive oil, and probably
| thicker than axle grease or vaseline / petroleum jelly.
|
| The ship in which that was used (triple-expansion steam
| engine, late 1800s design, built and used during WWII)
| directed spent steam around the incoming fuel flow
| directly prior to boiler injection, and _that_ steam then
| wrapped around the fuel line and part of the fuel tank
| itself to heat the oil to the point it would flow.
|
| Side note: Venezuelan oil is very thick and viscous, and
| requires mixing with lighter fractions of petroleum to be
| pumped out of wells. Venezuela typically _imports_ what
| would otherwise be waste _light_ fractions of petroleum,
| generally from the US or Nigeria (heavily dependent on
| political winds) in order to do this. A significant
| fraction of US petroleum exports go to this or similar
| uses. (I suspect Canadian tar sands see similar treatment
| though I don 't have a source on this.)
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The differences in opinion here may be because we're
| comparing #6 in a cold ambient environment to #5/#6 in a
| warm ambient environment. Still, #6 is no grease.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_oil#Maritime_fuel_clas
| sif...
| GJim wrote:
| My god you are thick.
|
| The point was that risks can be managed.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Petrol (gasoline to Americans) is dangerous largely for is
| vapours. It's one of the lightest-possible liquid fuels with
| about 6 carbon atoms per molecule (C6).[1] Most ships _don
| 't_ burn petrol itself,[2] but rather _heavier fractions_ of
| petroleum, generally either diesel (~C16) or bunker fuel (~30
| or longer), which _don 't_ vapourise readily. It's possible
| to extinguish a lit match in diesel fuel (the vapours above
| petrol would ignite and/or explode), and bunker fuel
| generally won't even _flow_ until it 's been heated above the
| boiling point of water (spent steam from steamships is used
| to heat the incoming fuel both so that it will flow and to
| vapourise it before injection into boilers or diesel
| cylinders).
|
| The comparatively small quantities of petrol carried in
| automobiles is not a grave hazard, though fuel tanks are
| protected against damage or ignition, and fires do happen.
| Larger vehicles, on land, sea, and air, often burn the
| comparatively safer kerosene (aviation) or diesel (heavy
| machinery).
|
| ________________________________
|
| Notes:
|
| 1. "Distillate" and "NGL" (natural gas liquids) are used in
| some instances, and can boil well below 100degC. Butane boils
| at -0.5degC / 31.5degF.
|
| 2. As I'd just mentioned in an earlier comment. I _thought_ a
| well-known cruise ship or ocean-liner had been converted to
| petrol, but can 't find a reference.
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43344605>
| bluGill wrote:
| There are only around 30 people on such a ship - we can put
| that many through extensive training to make sure they don't
| make mistakes.
|
| However no ship fueled without such trained crew should get
| anywhere near one that is. Only special shipyards should allow
| such a ship to dock - even the route from the open ocean needs
| to be controlled - no beaches "near" those ships. I'm not sure
| what a right margin of safety is, but don't allow such ship
| into your national waters without first knowing that.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > we can put that many through extensive training to make
| sure they don't make mistakes.
|
| I hope you are being sarcastic.
| Lanolderen wrote:
| You get skill issued, you get auschwitzed
| rdtsc wrote:
| > However no ship fueled without such trained crew should get
| anywhere near one that is. Only special shipyards should
| allow such a ship to dock - even the route from the open
| ocean needs to be controlled - no beaches "near" those ships.
| I'm not sure what a right margin of safety is, but don't
| allow such ship into your national waters without first
| knowing that.
|
| I could see that. At least, it sounds good in principle. But
| with ships sailing under flags of countries with lax safety
| requirements it may not be practical.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I thought the cargo ship that crashed into the Baltimore
| bridge had a known failing engine. I get the impression
| that a lot of shipping equipment and regulations are thread
| bare.
| amelius wrote:
| > Ammonia is toxic, explosive, and corrosive
|
| It also smells like rotten fish.
| M_bara wrote:
| I thought it smells like piss. Rotten eggs - hydrogen
| sulphide.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Although the chemical responsible for rotten fish,
| Trimethylamine, is a derivative of ammonia, I never made the
| link between the two. Ammonia smells like ammonia to me, no
| matter the concentration level.
| userbinator wrote:
| Interesting fact: ammonia was (and still is) used as a
| refrigerant, but aboard ships, carbon dioxide, also known as
| carbonic acid at the time, became more common due to its
| relative safety. This was in the late 19th/early 20th
| centuries.
| rdtsc wrote:
| It was a large refrigeration system that killed the person I
| had mentioned.
|
| It's kind of odd, ammonia was used back in the day on older
| systems. Then it was deemed too dangerous like you mentioned.
| But now, due to environmental impact it's now considered less
| dangerous and is "coming back".
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The nonsense will last until the first large accident in
| some experimental vehicle. Then it will go away again.
|
| Hopefully, it won't happen on the middle of a populated
| area.
| daedrdev wrote:
| We have yet to find a refrigerant that is not either toxic,
| explosive, or destructive to the ozone layer / a potent
| greenhouse gas. My understanding is that new consumer systems
| use propane because its relatively safe and not toxic or
| causing dangerous emmissions.
| uticus wrote:
| > use propane
|
| It's called R-290 [0], but yes this is the same as in
| "propane grill."
|
| I'm a "consumer," but the technicians I talk to about
| replacing a residential HVAC have mentioned that consumer
| HVAC systems need new fire detection (maybe also
| suppresion?) systems on the A/C side just because of the
| new ingredient.
|
| Again, not propane for the _heating_ side, but for cooling.
| Crazy.
|
| [0] https://www.superradiatorcoils.com/blog/r-290-pros-
| cons-comp...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I wonder why they don't just put the whole chilling unit
| outside and use a chilled water loop into the interior
| air handler.
| tristor wrote:
| You could do that, but you'd need to build a heavily
| insulated place to have the A-coil/evap head, as it
| stands right now the efficiency loss would be too much.
| Additionally, the current HVAC model also acts as a
| rudimentary de-humidification system for buildings which
| helps reduce the "felt" temperature and maintain humidity
| levels beyond just cooling.
| cyberax wrote:
| Supercritical CO2 is a great refrigerant. It's neither
| toxic, nor destructive to ozone, nor is it a particularly
| dangerous for GW.
| userbinator wrote:
| CO2 was superseded by other refrigerants because it's
| less efficient (incidentally, ammonia is one of the most
| efficient), and the (very) heavy equipment required to
| utilise it due to the extremely high pressures is also
| costly.
| cyberax wrote:
| I believe, CO2 is actually more thermodynamically
| efficient if used in supercritical freezers? It's just
| much more difficult to work with, as you need all the
| tubing to withstand about 90 atmospheres of pressure.
| grigri907 wrote:
| CO2 is less common today, but has hardly been
| "superceded." I specialize in energy modeling for
| industrial refrigeration systems, and have studied
| several new industrial cold storage projects comparing
| CO2 to freon and ammonia. Their efficiency is on par with
| ammonia systems, within a few percentage points.
|
| I'll agree that the equipment is heavy-duty, but disagree
| if you mean "massive." The energy density of CO2 is so
| high that suction lines can be 2"-4", 6"-8" is common for
| ammonia. Modern systems use many (a dozen+) small recip
| compressors instead of larger HP screw compressors. When
| all is said and done, CO2 systems are small enough that
| they are frequently contained to a single rack and placed
| on the roof of a building, whereas a comparable ammonia
| system requires its own engine room and a significantly
| larger footprint.
|
| The biggest opportunity for CO2 to outperform ammonia is
| in heat recovery and reuse. I had a customer who was
| exploring selling his (waste) heat as a utility to a
| neighboring food processor.
| timewizard wrote:
| The problem with R290 systems is they generally do not get
| service ports. As service ports tend to leak. So they're
| fully sealed systems. This is great for small scale
| refrigeration applications but for any indoor air cooling
| or commercial refrigeration it's effectively unusable.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| "Any leak will kill you through a horrible and painful
| process" is not on the same level of problems as
| "destructive to the ozone layer / a potent greenhouse gas".
| tromp wrote:
| If widely adopted, I fear that in time there will be
| sufficiently many major incidents that we'll start talking
| about deammonization as we currently talk about
| decarbonization.
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| The drivers would be wildly different. Carbon and GHG
| nowadays has this abstract, difficult to nail down effects.
| Ammonia leaks would have immediate and directly related
| negative effects.
| preisschild wrote:
| I wonder what environmentally-friendly propulsion system wins in
| the next decade for large ships: ammonia, hydrogen or nuclear
| reactors.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| I suppose there's more, ethanol and methanol, synthetic natural
| gas.
|
| It is a shame petroleum-based fuels are so damn convenient.
| iamthemonster wrote:
| none of those three, but I expect a combination of methanol,
| biodiesel and (only for near-shore and inland shipping) battery
| electric.
| McDyver wrote:
| Or wind
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanbird
| j33zusjuice wrote:
| We've come full circle.
| preisschild wrote:
| 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.
| speed_spread wrote:
| I propose submerged stainless steel cables pulling boats from
| underneath, powered by deep geothermal converters.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Synthetic hydrocarbon analogues.
|
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43344373>
| looofooo0 wrote:
| Batteries up to mid range are competetive already: https://eta-
| publications.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/2024-10...
| iamthemonster wrote:
| 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...
|
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Also a very unlikely form of suicide - people generally opt
| for less painful ways to die.
| rzwitserloot wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the costs of producing a fuel based solely on
| making it with electricity is by far, of all the options you
| named, best done with Ammonia.
|
| The reason the cost of ammonia is barely better, or even worse,
| than things like methanol, is because the electricity process
| is still expensive.
|
| But that can (and soon would!) become waaaay cheaper.
| Electricity __NOT__ on demand is dirt cheap and can be halved
| and quartered some more: Solar panels are _idiotically cheap_
| these days and that state of affairs is not temporary.
|
| We need more not-on-demand needs. As in, 'hey, uh, if theres
| some power left over cuz it's windy and sunny.. no prob! Let me
| run these ammonia producing machines at full power for a bit.
| No need for ammonia right now? No problem - compared to
| electricity, ammonia is vastly simpler to store'.
|
| Ammonia is a great not-on-demand consumer of electricty. That's
| why this is necessary.
|
| As you said:
|
| > the cost of the green electricity dominates the economics
| over the process plant CAPEX anyway.
|
| That's exactly the factor that can become ridiculously cheap.
| It isn't today because there's not much point investing in
| solar/wind because they do not cover on-demand needs (when it's
| not particularly sunny/windy, then electricity prices are sky
| high and you want to build electricity production that can
| deliver then. And solar/windy by definition can't), and the
| primary issue is transport.
|
| if the demand for ammonia skyrockets, you can solve it all.
| Ammonia does not need to be produced on-demand, and you don't
| need all that much transport (build the ammonia producing plant
| close to your solar/wind parks).
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Let me run these ammonia producing machines at full power
| for a bit.
|
| The problem with this is the capex and running costs of that
| kind of machinery make it expensive to keep idle. It can be
| uneconomic even with free electricity.
| bluGill wrote:
| Where are the costs. Many factories are only used 8 hours a
| day despite the high costs - it isn't worth the additional
| cost to have employees work overnight. Some really energy
| hungry factories traditionally run only overnight when
| energy is cheap, and they shutdown for yearly maintenance
| in December (thus freeing up their normal energy use when
| everyone is running Christmas lights) Now that wind and
| solar are coming online those are changing how they work.
|
| Different factories have difference costs. When energy is
| significant they consider that. When energy is not
| significant they just run when it works out.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Many factories are only used 8 hours a day despite the
| high cost_
|
| Is this true in chemicals?
| bluGill wrote:
| Which chemical? Some yes, some no. Some processes work
| better in continue runs, some you are doing batches. Some
| batches take a few weeks, some are hours...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Which chemical?_
|
| Any industrially-produced chemical where continuous
| production is possible. I haven't heard of such systems
| being competitive if left idle so someone can sleep.
| bluGill wrote:
| Continuous production implies at least a few people 24x7.
| Not all chemicals are continuous production. Often there
| is a choice of processes when you build a factory.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Continuous production implies at least a few people
| 24x7. Not all chemicals are continuous production_
|
| Yes. I'm asking if there is a chemical-production process
| that _can_ be run 24 /7 but which isn't due to labour
| shortages somewhere that doesn't result in such
| production being shut down (or protected)?
|
| Chemicals are globally-traded commodities. Some are
| perishable and/or difficult or even illegal to ship. So
| there is regional price variance. But _ceteris paribus_ ,
| if it can be run continuously, production will shift to
| where it is.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Normal operation of ammonia plants and methanol plants
| has been 24/7 for decades. Most other commodity chemicals
| too.
|
| Loading & unloading ships & barges as well.
|
| Some places only load railcars & trailers during days.
|
| Also it's common for engineers to only work straight days
| and often their office is not on site, they actually only
| make visits. They do it as needed and can be very
| dedicated and effective, but of course they can't touch
| anything because that requires a unionized operator.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| I've worked in two factories in my life. Dairy, and
| Printing. Dairy was 24/7/365. Printing was (averaging)
| 20/7/365 (product/layout change, maintenance, cleaning,
| etc.)
|
| My father was a fireman. Knowing what I know from him, I
| would never go to work for a factory that they got THOSE
| massive energy demanding machines that run non-stop and
| the fuel is ammonia. It is a near-certain death sentence,
| especially in 'some countries' where safety is 'a bit
| more relaxed'.
| matwood wrote:
| > Many factories are only used 8 hours a day despite the
| high costs
|
| I don't have a lot of direct experience but my dad worked
| in factories most of my childhood. Every single one ran
| nearly 24/7. Was that a chance occurrence of the types of
| factories we had near where I grew up?
| burnished wrote:
| Are you asking if all factories are like the ones that
| you grew up near?
|
| My understanding is that manufacturing tends to be the
| way you describe. I'd be surprised if that held true for
| all sorts of factories, especially in chemical
| production. Just a guess but I think paying chemical
| engineers for overnight shifts might cut into profits
| somewhat
|
| EDIT: another comment sparked a memory, I'm thinking
| specifically of batch operators.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Usually there will be only a single engineer or maybe two
| on staff for the night shift. But paying regular
| operating staff an additional 50% night shift bonus to
| keep the factory running is very often worth the price.
| t-3 wrote:
| The night shift extra is usually much closer to 50 cents
| than 50 percent. A lot of places even give the night
| shift the same pay, especially when the labor market is
| favorable to employers.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Stopping and restarting chemical plants is usually
| horribly expensive. Most of them run 24/7, non-stop, even
| if the companies have negative profit on some of the
| products.
| mcguire wrote:
| The only confirmed example I know of is Harley-Davidson,
| roughly during the boom of cruiser motorcycles
| (1995-2010?): They only ran one shift, but the PR of
| waiting lists and extremely high instant resale prices
| made the choice appealing in the face of the capital
| costs.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Wouldn't this imply that the ammonia consumption would have
| to be near the solar plant?
| WJW wrote:
| No? For similar reasons that fossil fuel consumers don't
| need to be near an oil well.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| You'd have to ship the ammonia to the point of use, which
| is going to be significantly more hazardous
| rjsw wrote:
| It only needs to be easier to ship than hydrogen.
| Retric wrote:
| You "ship" electricity near a port via the electric grid,
| and then make ammonia near or in the port. Economies of
| scale might favor having a few ammonia factories and then
| shipping it around by boat.
|
| Ammonia makes zero sense as a general use fuel, but ships
| need MW of power over several days and aren't in
| populated areas.
|
| Assuming, it's actually viable which isn't guaranteed.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| OK, that sounds like a good plan. But that's the opposite
| of what was proposed further up this thread.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It depends on whether you prefer to transfer electricity
| or ammonia. You get to pick whatever is easier, which
| caps the difficulty at not high. The suggestion of
| shipping ammonia was for the sake of convenience, not a
| burden. It's optional.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| the actual post I replied to originally said
|
| "build the ammonia producing plant close to your
| solar/wind parks"
|
| You can't pick that and then decide not to transfer the
| ammonia and decide not to transfer the electricity.
| Unless your solar plan is at the loading dock or
| something.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The suggestion of shipping ammonia was for the sake of
| convenience, not a burden. It's optional.
|
| Yes you have to transfer electricity in that case. We
| already know transferring electricity is easy.
|
| Don't get hung up on "picking" one as if the downsides
| get locked in at the pre-design phase. If it's difficult
| to transfer ammonia then nevermind go back to the
| existing easy option of wires.
|
| In other words, if that specific detail doesn't work out,
| it is not an argument against ammonia. It was just a
| potential bonus, not core to the idea. And it doesn't
| fundamentally change things. It's not the "opposite"
| plan.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Someone makes a statement. I point out that statement has
| implications. Someone then suggests an idea that is
| counter to the original statement. I point out that is
| inconsistent. Your response is "Don't get hung up on".
|
| Your argument at this point has just devolved into some
| variant of "don't confuse me with the facts"
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You said the plan was the opposite, but it was only a
| tiny optional detail that's opposite.
|
| The phrasing in that comment rejected the original plan
| _as a whole_ , and that's not right.
|
| Also the comment you called a "good plan" was still
| talking about shipping ammonia as a maybe! So even in
| that detail it's not the opposite of the original
| comment.
|
| I think your first comment was fine, but it's not your
| first comment that I replied to.
| Retric wrote:
| I wouldn't get that hung up on the specifics when we are
| using terms like 'near' which is why I said boats for
| economies of scale.
|
| I was thinking of navigable waterways which are common
| near major wind farms and some solar, not just major
| ports which rarely have a lot of space available. The UK
| is already facing issues with moving offshore wind around
| the country, an Ammonia plant could theoretically make a
| lot of sense.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| If ammonia cannot be shipped safely than the whole thing
| is moot. We're talking about "shipping" ammonia halfway
| around the world in the fuel tanks of these ammonia
| fueled ships. If storing it long term in fuel tanks can
| be done safely, than so can shipping it to port.
| pfdietz wrote:
| This also means ammonia may end up getting produced at
| the globally best places, the places where the solar
| resource is extremely good, like Chile, Namibia, parts of
| the middle East, then shipping elsewhere.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Sunny places with good ports and cheap land.
| WJW wrote:
| Shipping ammonia is commonly done already. For example,
| the first few search results for "ammonia tanker" has a
| story of Maersk ordering up to ten new tankers with 93000
| cubic metre capacity each.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| This is illogical - we ship a live nuclear reactor around
| the world in a nuclear carrier or icebreaker. But you
| cannot take it out and put it on a truck
| burnished wrote:
| That has more to do with the design of the vessel than
| anything.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| > Ammonia is a great not-on-demand consumer of electricty.
|
| This does not follow. The cost efficiency of ammonia
| production is highly dependent on the process being
| continuous and steady state. Every analysis that says ammonia
| is cost effective as a fuel is based on an efficient
| continuous process as a cost assumption.
|
| If you are constantly starting and stopping based on
| electricity availability then your ammonia just became much
| more expensive. In which case, it is probably no longer cost
| effective as a fuel. Mixing "best possible price" and "worst
| possible process" and pretending these represent the same
| instance of reality is misleading to say the least.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > The cost efficiency of ammonia production is highly
| dependent on the process being continuous and steady state.
|
| Hydrogen is the overwhelming energy input to ammonia
| production. Hydrogen is readily storable -- this is done
| even today, when the hydrogen comes from natural gas, to
| smooth things out to keep the ammonia plant running -- so
| intermittency of renewables will be almost entirely
| countered by doing the same thing and storing the green
| hydrogen.
|
| What matters is cost of electrolysers, but they have been
| getting very cheap in China.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| It is not just the cost of inputs.
|
| Ammonia synthesis is a high-pressure high-temperature
| process. One of the reasons to use a continuous steady-
| state process is that cycling it up and down causes
| thermal and pressure fatigue in the reactor. The safe
| operating life of a reactor can be surprisingly short if
| it is not operated at a steady state. If you want this to
| scale, it needs to be low maintenance and have a long
| operating life.
|
| You could in principle centralize ammonia production with
| sufficient reactant reserves to ensure continuous
| production from variable low-density energy sources like
| solar or wind. However, this would require hydrogen
| pipelines that largely don't exist and would take a long
| time to build. We can't repurpose existing natural gas
| infrastructure and similar because they weren't built
| with alloys resistant to hydrogen embrittlement. One of
| the big economic advantages of using methane for ammonia
| is that it takes advantage of the millions of kilometers
| of natural gas distribution pipeline that already exists.
|
| I'm not averse to the idea but the enthusiastic
| proponents are pretending like the practical realities of
| industrial chemistry don't apply to them. We aren't going
| to get to a green future with rainbows and unicorns, we
| need to brutally realistic about the true requirements.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I wasn't talking about the cost of inputs, I was talking
| about their putative intermittency.
|
| The argument that was being made seemed to be "renewables
| are intermittent, therefore ammonia synthesis based on
| renewable energy must be intermittent, or else use
| expensive storage". The counterargument is that hydrogen
| is the overwhelmingly most important input, and it is
| highly storable, so the intermittency of the inputs can
| be largely avoided at modest cost, allowing the ammonia
| plant to run 24/7.
|
| You may not be aware, but we _already have_ hydrogen
| pipelines coupled to ammonia plants. The US has ~1000
| miles of hydrogen pipelines for this purpose. It 's also
| not obvious to me why pipelines would necessarily be
| needed. After all, the ammonia plant could be built where
| the hydrogen is stored.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Can factories install local battery banks to cover a
| day's utilization? Charge up the batteries on the cheap
| electricity during noon and run the plant off of those
| reserves. I assume other industries are already running
| these cost optimization analyses as the renewable
| electricity market continues to develop. There is a
| balancing point between the capex and opex, but unless it
| is insanely energy hungry (like aluminum), that seems
| possible.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| > but unless it is insanely energy hungry (like aluminum)
|
| Producing a ton of hydrogen by electrolysis requires ~3x
| the energy to produce a ton of aluminum. It is, in fact,
| "insanely energy hungry". This isn't necessarily a
| problem but it does create logistical challenges.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| What comes back to the fact that you only need batteries
| for the ammonia production. Hydrogen production is a low-
| pressure process, and optionally even low-temperature.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| It takes 11 MW of electricity to make 1 ton of ammonia,
| ammonia plants can make 1000 to 3000 tons a day.
| Providing battery storage for that production rate for 24
| hours would probably cost more than the plant itself.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > You could in principle centralize ammonia production
| with sufficient reactant reserves to ensure continuous
| production from variable low-density energy sources like
| solar or wind.
|
| I'm probably missing something here but why would you
| need to pipe hydrogen to the plant, rather than just
| generating it on site from power drawn from the grid?
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Energy density mostly and being able to deliver that
| power where you need it. Aluminum plants are co-located
| with large-scale power plants, famously hydroelectric,
| for the same reason. Above certain power requirements,
| you essentially need the power generation to be onsite.
|
| Hydrogen requires 3x the energy of aluminum per ton, so
| it is an even bigger problem for hydrogen. Unlike
| aluminum, it is feasible to have large numbers of small
| hydrogen production plants but then you need to transport
| all that hydrogen at an acceptable scale.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Above certain power requirements, you essentially need
| the power generation to be onsite.
|
| Is this due to transmission losses or just because you
| couldn't feasibly build enough capacity cables to
| transmit large amounts of power over long distances?
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| A single ton of hydrogen requires ~50 MWh of electricity.
| Small special-purpose ammonia plants, which are common
| for some industrial applications, typically require on
| the order of 50 tons of hydrogen per day. This would
| require ~2.5 GWh of electricity per day via electrolysis.
| To put that in context, that is in the same ballpark as
| the average output of the largest solar farms ever built
| in the US.
|
| The largest ammonia plant in the US requires around 2,000
| tons of hydrogen per day. That would require 100 GWh per
| day to produce by electrolysis, which would require the
| entire output of a large hydroelectric or nuclear power
| plant, much like large aluminum refineries. Otherwise,
| you need to move a lot of electricity or a lot of
| hydrogen to have good efficiency, and there is
| infrastructure for neither.
|
| Converting natural gas into hydrogen is also energy
| intensive. One of the big advantages of natural gas is
| that your hydrogen source is also your energy source and
| there is vast infrastructure for moving natural gas
| around.
|
| Building green hydrogen pipelines likely makes more sense
| than trying to backhaul electricity from diffuse sources.
| A single hydrogen pipeline can reify a _lot_ of
| electricity production without the concomitant
| transmission and management infrastructure.
| foobarian wrote:
| A ton of hydrogen seems to occupy a cube with a 23 meter
| side. Wonder if a bunch of those could be built to hold
| the excess gas for night time operation.
|
| 100GWh is not small, but it's not impossible. The largest
| solar farm in operation is 5GW, and that could get you
| theoretically halfway there operating 10 hours a day.
|
| It feels like the challenges are a lot easier to solve
| than with fusion or nuclear.
| lurk2 wrote:
| The issue doesn't appear to be storage, but transmission.
| Hydrogen can leak through metal and lead to it becoming
| brittle, so you can't use conventional natural gas
| pipelines to transport it.
| foobarian wrote:
| Exactly, these tanks can be giant balloons right next to
| the solar panels all feeding the in-situ ammonia plant.
| lurk2 wrote:
| That was my thinking, but I think what he is saying is
| that power plants won't generate enough electricity to
| make building an in-situ ammonia plant economical. You
| need to network power plants together to operate a
| centralized ammonia plant 24/7, and the network to move
| this energy (whether in the form of hydrogen or
| electricity) doesn't currently exist.
| foobarian wrote:
| The land area of an all-in-one plant is maybe the biggest
| unknown for me with respect to just getting ownership and
| permits and such. But it's fun to imagine just picking a
| giant plot somewhere in the desert and plopping down 20
| GW of solar panels, enough hydrogen storage to keep the
| less energy intensive steps operating throughout the
| night, and presumably batteries for whatever still
| requires electric power while panels are offline. Water
| and air in, sweet sweet ammonia out. :-)
|
| Cloudy weather would be an interesting problem I guess.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| It is doable in theory but would require the construction
| of large-scale supporting infrastructure that currently
| doesn't exist. I am not optimistic about our ability to
| undertake infrastructure projects of this magnitude
| without it taking several decades and incurring obscene
| cost overruns that make even the most pessimistic
| economic models look optimistic.
|
| This will definitely be harder than nuclear. The
| expansive land use requirements means the legal battles
| pertaining to that would almost certainly span many
| decades. At least with nuclear there is a limited number
| of people that need to sign-off to have a viable project
| -- reforming that process probably would be simpler.
| TylerE wrote:
| I can't imagine it wouldn't be stored either as liquid or
| at least pressurized.
|
| Steam has something like 200x the volume of the water
| it's boiled from.
| TylerE wrote:
| One thing you can do there is have an onsite energy
| storage mechanism (battery, gravity, etc) and run the
| process 24/7, keeping the energy storage topped up
| whenever the cost of electricity falls below whatever
| threshold.
|
| Worst comes to worse you run on grid for a few hours.
| joshuanapoli wrote:
| Liquid ammonia takes less energy and volume than
| liquifying hydrogen.
| pfdietz wrote:
| This has nothing to do with hydrogen as an input to the
| ammonia production process. This hydrogen is not
| liquefied, even if it is temporarily stored (as a
| compressed gas, for example underground in solution mined
| salt caverns.)
| kragen wrote:
| Do you have concrete capex and opex numbers for ammonia-from-
| electricity plants? I understand we should expect those to go
| down over time because of the learning curve, but I don't
| even know their order of magnitude right now. It would also
| be nice to have an idea of how much efficiency the
| electrolyzers lose when operated intermittently instead of
| continuously (so, for example, you can't keep them at their
| optimal temperature). But, since we're presupposing that
| intermittent electrical energy will be very cheap, efficiency
| is less important than capex per output and non-energy opex.
|
| Supporting your point about solar panels continuing to be
| cheap, "mainstream" panels went up to 0.11EUR per peak watt
| last month: https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-
| modul-preis... which was a new historic low price in
| September and down 21% from 0.14EUR/Wp in February of last
| year, itself a historic record low price at the beginning of
| last year.
|
| The last time something like this happened to the energy
| supply, it was James Watt's steam-engine.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| What are the relative costs of producing methanol or ammonia
| from a kilowatt hour of electricity? I've always assumed
| methanol would be cheaper over all because it's less deadly.
| guerrilla wrote:
| We're already doing this with methanol in Sweeen though. So
| what's the point?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Short distance electric shipping seems the most feasible.
| Scotland is making steps in this direction.
| https://www.offshore-energy.biz/scotland-to-buy-seven-electr...
|
| Long distance .. this is just a problem. As you say it won't be
| solved unless there's carbon pricing and ultimately
| restrictions on fossil fuels in general, forcing a replacement
| with more expensive synthetic and bio-fuels.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I think long distance might be solvable too with a little out
| of the box thinking. Imagine ships could swap out batteries
| every few hundred miles. Think simple container batteries and
| some off shore wind park with facilities for charging
| container batteries and a stash of charged batteries.
| Floating off shore wind is now possible as well.
|
| Containers might be a bit tedious for this. So, why not use
| autonomous tug boats and barges. The tug boats simply pull
| the load between charging stations. When they are empty they
| head for a charger and a full one takes over. This could even
| work with existing ships, which are commonly maneuvered
| around harbors using tug boats already.
|
| Probably more than a few engineering challenges lurking here
| but it gets us out of the mindset that ships must be able to
| go for thousands of nautical miles without stopping for
| charging. I could see that working for a lot of coastal
| shipping routes.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Container batteries already seem to be a thing:
| https://www.offshore-energy.biz/worlds-first-700-teu-pure-
| ba...
|
| .. but again for relatively short distances. You do _not_
| want to have relatively unskilled personnel attempting
| swaps at sea, or in bad weather (which is also very
| dangerous for ships under tow).
|
| The China-EU distance is about 24,000km. I don't think more
| than one or two charging/swap stops are feasible on that
| route, so you're going to need something with 10,000km
| range at the very least.
| bluGill wrote:
| China-EU can follow the coast. It isn't unreasonable to
| just stop at a port every night. You can put the crew up
| in a hotel thus saving needing beds for everyone, and
| they can enjoy whatever meals they want. This will make
| the trip take 3x longer though, which is a very
| significant disadvantage, but if electric energy is
| enough cheaper they will go for it. Most things going via
| sea are not time sensitive, but the crew still needs to
| be paid along with the ship mortgage. China-US could do
| the same, but the trip is about 10x longer (I didn't
| bother to look this up) - even with free electric I'm not
| sure if it is worth it.
|
| There are islands like Hawaii where the above is not
| possible though so we still need something else.
| leoedin wrote:
| > It isn't unreasonable to just stop at a port every
| night
|
| Is it? How many more deep water ports would be needed if
| every ship had to stop every night? What about if you're
| passing hostile or undeveloped countries? What about when
| you need to cross the Pacific or Atlantic? Cargo ships
| move at maybe 15mph - there's definitely huge parts of
| the world that don't have a well equipped deep water port
| every 360 miles. Even major western countries only have a
| handful of major ports.
| bluGill wrote:
| I didn't say it was easy. Undeveloped countries would
| mostly welcome a chance for someone else to develop
| energy and port infrastructure. Hostile is a different
| issue, but you can bypass them as needed. (ships already
| pass by hostile countries)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It isn 't unreasonable to just stop at a port every
| night_
|
| You're describing coaling stations [1]. They worked in
| the era of empires (one government controls the coaling
| network) and no other options. They're uncompetitive
| today.
|
| Any energy system requiring them will not be competitive
| against direct-sail systems. You're paying for the crew
| and ship's deterioration with every delay.
|
| [1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/coaling-station
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Cost is indeed the core issue. It's an issue with most
| synthetic fuels and it's not an issue that is likely to go
| away. As long as that means you have to pay a steep premium to
| be green, it's not going to be popular. International agreement
| on carbon taxes is unlikely. And most ships operate in
| international waters under the flags of countries with
| favorable taxes and rules (e.g. Panama, Greece, etc.).
|
| With shipping, shooting for perfect is really expensive. But
| we're starting with a status quo that is really bad that can be
| improved upon.
|
| For example, most ships are made out of steel. Steel is
| relatively heavy. There's a ship yard in Tasmania working on a
| battery electric 300meter long ferry made out of aluminum.
| They've built dozens of aluminum ships already. Aluminum is
| much lighter than steel and that cuts the amount of energy
| needed to move it around by about half. That's nice because
| batteries are expensive and don't provide a lot of range. But
| making ferries out of aluminum is of course something that
| could work for any kind of ship.
|
| Fuel is really expensive. 50% fuel savings are very attractive
| to ship operators. Most ships burn bunker fuel. That's properly
| nasty stuff. So using only half of that would be an
| improvement. It's toxic, causes lots of pollution and is nasty
| if it gets in the water. Some cruise ships run on LNG these
| days. Much cleaner but it takes up space. Those ships are
| mostly still made out of steel. If you make them out of
| aluminum, they'd be a lot lighter probably and use less fuel.
| So smaller LNG tanks, less CO2 emitted, and more space for the
| passengers. Win win.
|
| There are also some interesting things happening with
| composites and carbon fiber. That stuff is even lighter and
| there are some companies focusing on marine applications as
| well. So, we could cut weight and fuel usage of ships by using
| modern/different materials.
|
| There are some experiments happening with using sails on ships
| to cut fuel usage further. If you add all this up, we could be
| cutting fuel usage significantly (40-70%) and make the
| emissions problem a lot smaller. And unlike synthetic fuels,
| this also translates into financial savings. So that means it's
| more likely to happen.
|
| And if we eventually put batteries in these ships, they'll go a
| bit further as well.
|
| It's not perfect. But probably a lot better.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Aluminum is much lighter than steel and that cuts the
| amount of energy needed to move it around by about half.
|
| Hmm. I'm suspicious about this - might be true for cars,
| definitely true for planes, but ships sit at neutral
| buoyancy, most of the mass is cargo, and the main component
| of energy expenditure is actually drag. So there's
| significant benefits to low drag hull designs or "slow
| steaming", but the actual ship material isn't terribly high
| up on the priority list. And aluminium is way more expensive.
| kragen wrote:
| I think aluminum is mostly more expensive than steel
| because energy is expensive, but solar energy makes energy
| cheap.
|
| If a ship's mass were mostly ship rather than mostly cargo,
| making it out of a heavier material would increase its
| water displacement, which would increase its drag. I don't
| know if that's a proportional effect; I think it's actually
| sublinear. But, since most of the mass is cargo, it won't
| make much of a difference.
|
| If most of the mass _weren 't_ cargo, you could ship things
| more cheaply by sealing the cargo in giant plastic bags and
| towing it across the ocean behind a tugboat.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Both steel and aluminum production depend mostly on the
| cost of energy, so any improvements that would make
| aluminum cheaper would also make steel cheaper. Steel
| also has the benefit of being ferromagnetic so it's a lot
| cheaper to pull scrap steel out of the garbage stream and
| recycle it, but that depends on having lots of scrap
| steel to begin with.
|
| There's really not a lot of room to make aluminum as
| cheap as steel, as all economies of scale have by now
| been mostly realized. The cost of energy is so dominant
| that it makes sense to run smelting plants idle most of
| the time with the crucible heated constantly just to take
| advantage of negative power prices (although there are
| other factors at play like subsidies and national
| security concerns).
|
| Barring some sort of seismic scientific breakthrough in
| metallurgy, the current ratio of 2-3x the cost of steel
| is here to stay. There's maybe a little room if we reach
| "peak aluminum" as the fraction of recycled scrap
| approaches 100%, but I don't think that would make that
| much of a difference because we're likely to hit "peak
| steel" before then (and again, its just easier to recycle
| from a logistics standpoint).
| kragen wrote:
| Hmm, really? I didn't realize that. Thank you!
| bluGill wrote:
| aluminum has terrible metal fatigue issues. Ships that have
| been perfectly fine for years will suddenly just fall into
| pieces. Trucks where weight matter do often use aluminum
| trailers, but they keep careful track so they are scrapped
| before they fall apart. This fall about is not something an
| inspection will catch (not 100% true, ultrasound and other
| inspection methods will catch some of this, but for
| discussion it is close enough to say you just scrap aluminum
| before it fails instead of inspecting)
|
| That isn't to say aluminum can't be used for ships. Only that
| it is tricky.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| There are different alloys of aluminum with different
| properties. Just like steel. And of course it's been used
| in the aviation industry for a long time as well. Car
| manufacturers are using aluminum castings in cars these
| days. And there are engine blocks made out of aluminum as
| well.
|
| Anyway, this is the ship yard I mentioned. They have a few
| decades experience making ships out of aluminum:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incat
| AceyMan wrote:
| As I understand it, the gotcha with aluminum is: there is
| no such thing as non-fatiguing stress -- whereas, say,
| steels, have a range of elasticity where it can operate
| and not lose strength (or get cold-work hardened).
|
| With aluminum, any flexion -- no matter how little --
| marginally reduces the strength of the material. Ergo,
| even under ideal conditions it's saddled with a limited
| service life.
| HPsquared wrote:
| You just design it so the stress in the material gives a
| very long fatigue life (as in, how many zeros do you
| want?). It doesn't have a defined "fatigue limit", but it
| may as well have.
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| I don't understand how an aluminum structure can withstand
| the stresses in bulk-oriented ships without fatiguing to
| destruction in the first rough weather.
| HPsquared wrote:
| You make it thick enough so the material isn't stressed.
| This does require rigorous engineering processes, but it's
| pretty common.
| scythe wrote:
| >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.
|
| There is a ton of research going into improving the efficiency
| of the H2 > NH3 conversion, and there are at least two startups
| (Tsubame in Japan and a new one I don't remember). There's no
| rule that says you can't beat Haber.
|
| Compared to methanol, ammonia is currently more expensive but
| vastly more scalable in the long run; once you reach the
| biofuel "ceiling" (roughly corresponding to the availability of
| farming and forestry byproducts) you're stuck making it via
| carbon capture, which has its own efficiency problems.
| kragen wrote:
| By "efficiency" do you mean energy consumption or hydrogen
| consumption?
| scythe wrote:
| Energy consumption. I am pretty sure that the hydrogen
| utilization in most ammonia production is very high.
|
| In theory the energy required to produce ammonia is
| negative (Hf < 0) but at standard pressure its formation is
| thermodynamically unfavorable (Gf = Hf + TdeltaS > 0). But
| the bigger issue is the very high activation energy barrier
| for ammonia synthesis, which results in a lot of energy
| being used to make ammonia at very high pressure and
| temperature.
|
| Right now there are two competing approaches to reducing
| the cost of ammonia production. Tsubame is using a new
| ruthenium-based catalyst that lowers the reaction
| temperature (and therefore, also the pressure). The other
| method is by electrocatalysis. I don't know for sure that
| this is what NitroVolt is doing but their name certainly
| suggests it.
| kragen wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| Presumably if you had some way of rapidly removing the
| ammonia produced from the reaction, like maybe a high-
| temperature highly polar solvent that reacted reversibly
| with the ammonia, but didn't dissolve much hydrogen or
| nitrogen, you could get by with a lower equilibrium
| amount of ammonia and thus much lower pressure. Anhydrous
| phosphoric acid seems like a potential candidate? But
| that's obvious enough that people probably tried it a
| century ago.
| Anduia wrote:
| That linkedin post seems AI generated, got a better source?
| jgraham wrote:
| Note that biofuels aren't especially environmentally friendly,
| even just considering carbon emissions. See e.g. [1], which
| makes the most optimistic possible assumption by ignoring land
| use changes and still concludes "the reductions for most
| feedstocks are insufficient to meet the GHG savings required by
| the EU Renewable Energy Directive" (second generation biofuels
| may do better, but that isn't clear). Also ignoring land use
| changes is a very bad asssumption; if your plan is to run
| global shipping (or other industries) on biofuels it seems
| highly implausible that it's not going to end up with more land
| overall used for growing crops. If that's land that could
| otherwise be sequestering carbon (e.g. drained peat bogs, which
| have the advantage of being highly fertile), then it's clearly
| going to be a significant contribution to carbon emissions (not
| to mention the ecological impacts of converting yet more land
| to agriculture).
|
| [1]
| https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2020.035...
| kragen wrote:
| > _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.
| (...) 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._
|
| You seem to be contradicting yourself here? If learning rates
| and technology improvement drastically drive down the cost of
| solar cells, as you say they might, and the cost of electricity
| dominates the cost of green ammonia, as you say it does,
| doesn't that mean that the learning rates and technology
| improvement in solar cells will drastically drive down the cost
| of green ammonia? Wouldn't that make ammonia much cheaper than
| biodiesel, keeping biodiesel from being competitive?
|
| (I'm not sure ammonia is a competitive fuel for other reasons,
| such as the corrosion and safety issues discussed in the
| article, but it seems clear to me that if it's going to be
| uncompetitively _expensive_ , it would have to be because one
| of the premises above is wrong, for example because the cost of
| green ammonia is dominated by capex or because solar cells stop
| dropping in cost. I don't see how you can sustain those
| premises and deny the conclusion.)
| whatever1 wrote:
| At this risk envelope I don't see why nuclear / battery hybrids
| are not a serious contender. We can for example have them work
| on purely electric mode when close to ports and then enable the
| reactor in the open sea.
|
| We do something similar with bunker fuel of different grades.
| They are forced to use the good stuff near the ports and once
| in the open sea they start burning the muddy Godzilla.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >"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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Batteries are most likely the most feasible option for many
| applications soon.
| iamthemonster wrote:
| 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.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| > However, for United States LNG in particular, the LNG
| production chain actually has very high emissions of methane.
|
| I thought LNG _was_ methane. What am I missing here?
| ethangk wrote:
| I'd assume they're talking about methane leaks throughout
| the supply chain
| XorNot wrote:
| No you've got the gist of it: the point is that numbers for
| CO2 emissions of LNG assume a leak-free supply chain.
|
| That's not possible in practice: LNG leaks at almost every
| single step, and monitoring of it has been inconsistent and
| poorly implemented. Add in the significantly higher
| greenhouse effect of methane in the atmosphere, and you
| lose essentially _all_ the potential benefits (not to
| mention the ultimate issue of continuing to add sequestered
| CO2 back into the atmosphere - it 's still a fossil fuel).
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Methane leaks. Unburnt methane has a global warming
| potential 28 times higher than CO2. (This is why landfills
| will burn methane buildup, even if they aren't using it to
| generate electricity or capturing it to resell.)
| dylan604 wrote:
| NASA has been showing methane leaks from satellites built for
| purpose.[0] I'll give you three guesses as to where the
| location of the leaks are located, but you'll only need one.
|
| Better read the data now before it gets stricken from the
| record.
|
| [0] https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/jpl/methane-
| supe...
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Except most emissions are not _leaks_. A leak implies an
| unintended or unwanted behaviour. But most emissions are
| from indented behaviour of the system. The equipment is.
| designed to vent to atmosphere as part of normal operation,
| and it's not worth it for them to burn it until they have
| to pay for this pollution.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I see you and I have a difference of what we consider a
| leak. You seem to only consider it a leak in the
| equipment being used. I consider it when humans punch a
| hole in the ground and the gas is released by that human
| activity.
| lurk2 wrote:
| [flagged]
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm not being obtuse at all. That methane would not be
| leaking in these locations if humans did not attempt to
| extract it. Regardless if the leaks from faulty plumbing
| or just not making the hole the right way so the methane
| in the air is a direct result of that human activity, it
| is still methane leaking into the air
| lurk2 wrote:
| No ordinary person would interpret your original comment
| this way. _aavaa_ was correct: "A leak implies an
| unintended or unwanted behaviour."
|
| If producers are intentionally venting off the methane,
| it isn't leaking, it's being released.
|
| > A leak is a way (usually an opening) for fluid to
| escape a container or fluid-containing system, such as a
| tank or a ship's hull, through which the contents of the
| container can escape or outside matter can enter the
| container. Leaks are usually unintended and therefore
| undesired.
|
| https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leak
| p1mrx wrote:
| > I'll give you three guesses as to where the location of
| the leaks are located, but you'll only need one.
|
| Were we supposed to guess New Mexico, Turkmenistan, and
| Iran, or am I missing something?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Firstly, drilling / wellhead operations.
|
| 2nd 'graph of the linked article:
|
| _In the data EMIT has collected since being installed on
| the International Space Station in July, the science team
| has identified more than 50 "super-emitters" in Central
| Asia, the Middle East, and the Southwestern United
| States. Super-emitters are facilities, equipment, and
| other infrastructure, typically in the fossil-fuel,
| waste, or agriculture sectors, that emit methane at high
| rates._
|
| <https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/jpl/methane-
| supe...>
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > LNG's climate impact (in terms of global warming) is no
| better than coal. I'm sure it's beneficial compared to bunker
| fuel,
|
| Why are you sure of that?
|
| Oils release an amount of CO2 that's midway between natural
| gas and coal. So unless bunker fuel is causing some other big
| release of greenhouse gasses, if natural gas is near coal
| then it's worse than bunker fuel.
|
| On top of that, doesn't the sulfur pollution from bunker fuel
| have a cooling effect?
| iamthemonster wrote:
| Hmm maybe I shouldn't be so sure of myself then. The
| comparison between LNG and coal that I was referencing was
| the comparison between coal and LNG's lifecycle emissions
| on the basis of like-for-like electricity generation (so it
| was slightly apples&oranges for me to say that).
|
| I'd assumed that a main engine's efficiency with bunker
| fuel was awful and with LNG was much better, meaning LNG
| had emissions as a shipping fuel.
|
| But I think taking into account the methane emissions of
| upstream production (which varies incredibly wildly
| depending on the production environment) LNG from most of
| the world (particularly the USA) will be a worse shipping
| fuel on a global warming basis than bunker fuel.
|
| Thanks for picking that up.
|
| The cooling effect of sulphur dioxide emissions (which make
| sulphates in the atmosphere) is a whole Pandora's box that
| I'm unqualified to open but yes, there's a significant
| cooling effect from the SO2 emissions of bunker fuel and
| the 2020 rules change on VLSFO dramatically slashed the
| shipping industry's SO2 emissions (noting that SO2
| emissions have also been falling across the board, and
| shipping is only one component of that).
| https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/sulfur-dioxide-
| emis...
| pjc50 wrote:
| The shipping industry only ever dipped slightly into natural
| gas. There are some CNG/LNG ferries around, but all the long
| haul stuff in international waters (which is basically lawless)
| uses bunker fuel.
| hannob wrote:
| > What am I missing here?
|
| Climate change. Maybe you've heard of it?
|
| (And it turns out things with LNG ships are much worse than
| previously believed. They not only emit CO2 - a bit less than
| traditional bunker fuel, but not much - they also emit methane,
| and in no small quantities. The LNG industry likes to pretend
| that these emissions are small and neglegible, but whenever
| someone goes out and actually measures them, they are
| substantial.)
| xandrius wrote:
| Natural gas, aka methane, has a big impact on climate change.
| Don't listen what the gas industry is trying to get everyone to
| believe, natural gas is as natural as petroil.
| keepamovin wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Ammonia...this ship could be run on poop...
| wpollock wrote:
| Bad news, men. The captain says we're behind schedule so beans
| for supper again!
| npteljes wrote:
| Ammonia is in peepee, not poopoo. Maybe you are thinking
| methane, which is present in farts.
| cratermoon wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Isn't the energy return on investment for this extremely low
| and/or negative? Am I missing something here?
| api wrote:
| It's a way of storing energy. You use solar, nuclear, wind,
| etc. to make ammonia.
| jnmandal wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Maybe. But longer term, new uses for ammonia might well lead to
| more efficient and widespread production.
| lupusreal wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Anything to avoid banning bunker fuel, and forcing ship owners to
| spend more for diesel which is cleaner.
| shallichange wrote:
| Why not sails? Wind. That stuff
| mulmen wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| _first_ ?
|
| https://zero.fortescue.com/en/case-studies/green-pioneer
|
| I dont think so.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Meanwhile:
| 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-iro...
|
| Ammonia too complicated?
| giantg2 wrote:
| 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.
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