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New Chemical Process Could Make Ammonia a Practical Car Fuel
overThruster (58843) writes A phys.org article says UK researchers have made a breakthrough that could make ammonia a practical source of hydrogen for fueling cars. From the article: "Many catalysts can effectively crack ammonia to release the hydrogen, but the best ones are very expensive precious metals. This new method is different and involves two simultaneous chemical processes rather than using a catalyst, and can achieve the same result at a fraction of the cost. ... Professor Bill David, who led the STFC research team at the ISIS Neutron Source, said 'Our approach is as effective as the best current catalysts but the active material, sodium amide, costs pennies to produce. We can produce hydrogen from ammonia "on demand" effectively and affordably.'"
The full paper. The researchers claim that a two-liter reaction chamber could produce enough hydrogen to power a typical sedan.
Actually, the furthest along are gasoline engines. 100% of all research funds should go to increasing fuel efficiency.
OK, I'm officially confused.
According to wiki:
So, we're going to generate hydrogen, so we can make ammonia, and then we're going to ... use the ammonia to make hydrogen?
Either I'm completely not understanding my own link, or there's a magic step in there which eludes me.
If you're already efficiently making hydrogen to make ammonia,and you wanted hydrogen for fuel, why not skip the step of making ammonia?
I guess the obvious conclusion is that it's easier and safer to deal with ammonia, but my dad used to manage refrigeration plants, and ammonia isn't something you fool around with either.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Ammonia reacts to form hydrogen. Hydrogen reacts in a fuel cell to produce electricity. Electricity drives the electric car. This is electrical storage, just one implemented as an irreversible flow battery rather than a solid rechargeable one.
Catalyst: "a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change."
Yes, metals like palladium and rhodium cost a good chunk of change, but you don't need a lot of them, and you only need them once (per car). You add them in trace amounts to a porous honeycomb-like structure to maximize surface area, and bam, that whole gram of palladium adds $30 to the total cost of your car. Make no mistake, the more ways we have to accomplish a particular reaction, the better, and I consider TFA very cool news... But the cost of the catalyst wouldn't break the bank vs the cost of a new car.
Call me paranoid, but I can tell you a much more realistic reason we don't already have cars running on ammonia - The DEA. I can't buy a goddamned bulk pack of (real, not reformulated) Sudafed without showing two forms of ID, and $Deity help me if I actually need to get more in the same month! On the other side of the meth equation, a convenient source of anhydrous ammonia would make it much easier and safer to manufacture, so no ammonia for you!
Long term, I should think it would be to our advantage to pursue as many different kinds of fuels as we can find.
Because some might be better suited for some applications, and until you have a universal replacement for gasoline, you have no idea of what will be viable.
You're suggesting we decide a winning technology now, and ignore all others. Problem is, we don't yet know what the winning technology is.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Actually, we should spend a bit more money on increasing traffic control and road design efficiency. Every car gets 0 miles to the gallon unnecessarily stopped at a light.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
The reason why the gas companies have power is not because they are magic, but because they sell it so cheaply, yet make a huge profit.
So when you say "damned sure no will will ever allow this to be a legit fuel for cars", you are basically wrong. The proof is that diesel and ethanol additives are also sold as fuel.
If this was cheaper per gallon than gasoline, without any additional problems (i.e. cars still went as fast, no deadly poisons released), then you would be trampled by the rush to convert cars to ammonia.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
why not just burn the ammonia?
Actually this is possible. From wikipedia:
Ammonia cannot be easily or efficiently used in existing Otto cycle engines because of its very low octane rating, although with only minor modifications to carburetors/injectors and a drastic reduction in compression ratio, which would require new pistons, a gasoline engine could be made to work exclusively with ammonia, at a low fraction of its power output before conversion and much higher fuel consumption
It makes perfectly good business sense. If you were an entrepreneur, wouldn't you be very happy to move to such a technology, drastically undercutting the oil companies? Contrary to popular belief, businesses don't generally make killings because they charge a lot, but rather because they don't charge a lot, relative to other alternatives. If you were one of the first firms to enter such a market (assuming the consuming public moves on this new tech) and make a very handsome profit, charging far more than your input costs. New players will eventually enter the market and big down prices, but since you were [one of the] first players, you got to make a killing. That is how economics works. The market rewards the first entrants to a market via profits above and beyond the going rate of return.
Actually, I think the crux of the problem is that you don't understand price theory. Price is not determined by the cost of the inputs. Rather, society determines the price via their actions in purchasing or not purchasing a good (and of course to nearly infinite extents of purchasing vs not purchasing). The more society wants a good, the higher prices will be driven up (all things the same), inducing more competitors to the market who compete for the lion's share, in turn bidding down the price until equilibrium is reached. (Nevermind that equilibrium almost certainly will change before it is ever reached.)
Uhm, we're pretty close to that already. About 700 miles give or take. Tesla can do 250 easy, some are pushing 300. So a 1 hr full charge stop (you do have to eat, right?) plus another 30 minute stop (pee break) to 50% charge would get you there. Next year, in the lighter Model X a single 1hr stop might do it.
You'll need a new excuse soon. I suggest Miami to Seattle. People are *constantly* driving that route, so if an electric can't do it, it will never be a success.
Every car gets 0 miles to the gallon unnecessarily stopped at a light.
I'm wondering, instead of using red/green switches at intersections, maybe we can have the cars drive through diffraction plates set up around the intersection. Then the wavefunction of you and car can spread out into the intersection via diffraction and arrive randomly into one of several quantum states (outbound lanes) which head toward your destination. If we made cars and their drivers out of bosons instead of fermions, it might work. Only one fermion can occupy any given quantum state. So with fermionic cars, there's always a small probability of quantum entanglement within the intersection between you and some other guy trying to make a left.
As long as all drivers keep their eyes closed.
For the conversion from Ammonia to Hydrogen: Nitrogen.
Ammonia is NH3, so you'd get mostly Hydrogen and a byproduct of 1 nitrogen atom.
Nitrogen is already 78% of the earths atmosphere, and not a greenhouse gas. So it's not bad... at all.
Once you have the hydrogen, you mix it with oxygen and light it. (assuming you don't use it in a fuel cell)
You can literally put hydrogen into a normal combustion engine and it will run on it.
Hydrogen is 3x as energy dense as gasoline. So it works fantastically well. Newer cars with computers would need some modification. But if you're using an old carborated engine it works great.
What comes out the exhaust is water.
I've actually experimented with this. I have a "Rock crawler" (imagine a mini-monster truck) and one thing we're always dealing with is when trying to go up or down extreme angles gasoline engines tend not to work so hot. They like to be level. Hydrogen doesn't care if its upside down. I eventually went with natural gas. Hydrogen is hard to get in remote areas. But you can get a natural gas tank filled just about anywhere. But yea, if I could create it from stored ammonia I'd probably go back to it. The engine ran a lot better on it than natural gas.
Ammonia is toxic, but it's not THAT toxic. It is certainly less likely to kill you or leave lasting harm than a hydrogen fire/explosion.
The ammonia in your cleaning bottle is hydrous ammonia, which is a fancy way of saying it is mostly water. Hydrous ammonia is pretty tame stuff. Anhydrous (no water) ammonia, like the kind required for chemical reactions, is nasty nasty stuff. If you breathe the vapors it can cause permanent damage to your lungs. If you get it on your skin, you can easilly get a nasty chemical burn. The vapor is flamable and forms explosive mixtures with air. It reacts violently with a variety of compounds.
Anhydrous ammonia is dangerous. Certainly much more dangerous than you seem to think it is.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Your geo metro also accelerates slowly, can't carry much (all 3 square feet of storage space) and get squished in an accident because it's the size of a postage stamp.
Meanwhile, for a little less efficiency, my Honda Civic has pulled trailers across the country (added a hitch), tons of storage room and is relatively safe.
The chances of surviving a real crash in a Metro is slim to none... You go ahead and tell me how that head on crash goes for you WHEN it happens. I know I'm still walking...
I think you miss the original poster's point. Obviously safety standards have improved since the Metro came out. But really, are you thinking that having air bags and crumple zones makes a car less fuel efficient? The reason the Metro gets good mileage is that it is relatively light weight and doesn't have a high horse power engine that allows one to far exceed the design specification of the vehicle.
There is no doubt that a Honda Civic is a good car, but as for efficiency, it is more than a "little less" unless your civic gets around 50 or 60 miles per gallon. When the civic was first introduced to the US in the 70s, it was a very fuel efficient sub compact economy car. Today's Civic, while a wonderful car is not any of those things.
What causes a vehicle to be fuel efficient is aerodynamics and low weight. The engines are more fuel efficient than even a decade ago, but manufactures have used that increased efficiency to build bigger cars instead of burning less oil.
Think of a race car. It's one of the most fuel efficient vehicles made. It squeezes every bit of energy out of the fuel that there is. And yet, it gets lousy mileage (but great HP). What is more efficient in solving real world problems, creating a car that can accelerate quicker without using more fuel than it's predecessor or one that can get from point A to point B on less fuel than it's predecessor. Engineers seem to think it is the former where as scientists say we need the latter.
Myth Busters took this on for a very congested test (also very controlled)
They got somewhere around 180 cars through a traditional 4 way stop, and over 300 through the same space as a roundabout. I was floored it was that great of a difference, they said because at any given time there were multiple cars in the roundabout doing their own thing. (may be off on the numbers, but the roundabout was unbelievably better in their test)
Granted the layout of the roundabout matters a TON, and most I have seen around here are cram a roundabout in a tiny space so you don't REALLY know if the car to your left is leaving the roundabout or continuing...
If your car divides by zero, it's probably a Fiat.
Cars don't have to be as fast as they are today, but thats what people, driven by the automotive press, have decided they want. Today's toyota camry and honda accord both can be bought with engines that approach 300HP and have sub 6 second 0 to 60 times.
40 years ago, that was the realm of sports cars. Now we have that with dime-a-dozen, bake-potato-on-wheels flagship sedans
build a sedan with a 10 second 0 to 60, which used to be quite common, and your car will be universally lambasted as "sluggish".
even the new kia sedona minivan has a 0 to 60 of 7.4 seconds and a quarter mile just over 15 seconds..
I don't know the figures, so I don't know if it's just Americans that aren't used to them, but accidents on roundabouts are much less dangerous. That's a decent trade-off, even if there are more accidents.
Very efficiency. No gas. Much MPG.