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That's why urine makes a good weed killer. It's all in the ammonia. ;-)
Clearly there are some very smart ,well informed posters on this board....but my money says the DeNora R&D team far outsmart you....if DeNora says our product is good ...then good it is ... :)
Paola111. Does it not bother you that you're in agreement with Boris the clown? H2 from renewables is the way forward. Degraded battery mountains are not. Have a look around at the major companies who also don't agree. You've probably heard of a few.....
Unfortunately the science gets a bit complicated but essentially you get energy out when converting nitrogen and hydrogen to ammonia. The problem is that even with the best currently available catalyst the reaction doesn't happen that well until you get to circa 400 C and 200 atmospheres pressure. Plus of course they usually break down methane as a source of the hydrogen. Not as wasteful as it sounds as the bye products of this are linked in to other processes. But of course it all costs money in terms of the equipment and energy recovery etc so it only really works cost efficiently at huge scale.
What the Japanese have done is find a massively more effective catalyst based on copying nature that works efficiently at room temperature and pressure using water rather than methane as the hydrogen source. And because the reaction actually releases energy it substantially powers itself. The major cost appears to be needing to occasionally regenerate the catalyst as it seems to be slowly degraded by the reaction. Not a process that will be making millions of tonnes of ammonia next year but demonstrates that much easier methods of making ammonia can be found that don't need the huge infrastructure of the current process.
https://new.siemens.com/uk/en/company/topic-areas/sustainable-energy/green-ammonia.html
Bumble - agreed - and thanks to various responses I feel better informed.
We can question the green credentials - a 'Hydrogen Economy' that doesn't rely on burning fossil fuels one way or another is a long way off but surely the direction of travel is positive and the goal desirable ? AFC's technology turns hydrogen into clean power, that's their bit of the puzzle. When others can turn water (or whatever) into hydrogen cleanly, economically and on an industrial scale then.....
Peaky. Stupid phone did it again!
Pesky, not pesky. The only pesky thing, is the poor speech recognition...
hydrogen is not a good energy Vector in my opinion because electrolysing it generally involves twice as much electricity energy being used as the energy contained in the hydrogen produced, unless you produce it from high-temperature electrolysis at a nuclear reactor. and then when storing the hydrogen at 350 bar as it only has one 13th the energy density of petrol. using it in a fuel cell is only 80% efficient whereas if you charge an electric vehicle then your whole cycle (from Charging to discharge to output power from wheel motors)efficiency is 95%. the reason Britain's 8 hydrogen filling stations on used is because a hydrogen car not only has much higher capital costs but also costs more to run than petrol even though the hydrogen isn't taxed yet, and even though so far most of the hydrogen is dirty hydrogen steam reformed from methane with the CO2 vented. I don't believe hydrogen can ever compete with electric vehicles and electrification of home heating as a means of getting to zero carbon. It is a fashionable overpriced. scam. Boris Johnson was asked about it as I stood next to him at a local party reception in June, and spontaneously replied that it's ridiculously expensive - so he gets it. There are other firms also claiming very efficient electrolysers. I think it will be like Kod (a high cost base would be producer of lithium), fashionable and pesky for a while but a rubbish long term hold. The future isn't hydrogen.
Actually I thought fairview made a good point. It is correct to say you can use a fuel cell to make electricity and water with no CO2 produced, but to make the ammonia you need power in the first place, so is that renewable?
There are questions to be asked over the green credentials of an ammonia-fed system, and the cost relative to other types of power.
And of course Ammonia is also present in urine.
You taking the ....v? )
Fairview - Are you questioning the feasibility of the technology or just it's green credentials ?
Fairview, hydrogen can be produced from waste energy or energy that is not stored when produced. An example of this would be offshore wind, utilising the energy when demand is low to crack water into its component parts. This is using green energy to store hydrogen which can then be used in a fuel cell when demand is high.
There are plenty of examples of green ways of producing hydrogen and/or ammonia. The ChlorAlkali industry simply vents or vented waste hydrogen to atmosphere. This was the initial focus of AFC.
I did not say you could not make hydrogen by green electrolysis.......
Hydrogen fuel cell technology is great but the problem is where do you get the hydrogen. As discussed, with current technology producing large amounts of ammonia in a green way is problematic. Contrary to what Bumble says you can use electrolysis to make hydrogen in a green way by using renewable methods of generating electricity. Trouble is you will have to compete with ITM then. One thing is for sure: the shares have rocketed recently and I'm pretty sure that not many people that were buying and making money were questioning the feasibility of all this. I suppose if you've made money it doesn't really matter but at some point a company has to deliver on its promises so we will see.
What powers an ammonia cracker then?
Fairview -
Hydrogen is the main technology here - the Ammonia solution is not central but provides an alternative fuel source. But you make a fair point - ammonia production is energy intensive and co2 producing. (There is the prospect of 'Green Ammonia' on the horizon where it is produced via electrolytes and renewable energy). Your question prompted me to google the ammonia thing so I welcome it (that's about the limit of my science though I'm afraid). Doesn't change the investment argument here for me - I'm concerned about my pension not the planet at this point. Having said that you're not suggesting that Hydrogen fuel cell technology doesn't sit very comfortably in anyone's 'green' portfolio ??
Time to privatise the sewage farms, so ammonia and recoverable drugs can be harvested.
There would be no point making hydrogen on site using AlkaMem because you would need power for electrolysis, which would undo any good from the fuelcell. As boffin has said ammonia is used because it is easier to store and move about than hydrogen. The other approach, which is what they originally said, would be to use biomethane.
Perhaps something for the future, and has already been pointed out ammonia is more suitable at present.
Yes, reference the distinctive smell
Heath maybe they can AlkaMem to produce hydrogen directly through electrolysis but why are they talking about ammonia then? Of course you have to factor in that there are other companies that are far more advanced in that field like ITM.
We are talking about potentially a lot of ammonia that is going to be needed so until they can answer where it is going to come from the question remains.
And of course Ammonia is also present in urine.
You can't get ammonia from farm waste at meaningful efficiency. In fact 80% or so of the 175 million tonne global production of ammonia is used to make fertilisers to input to farming. For the past 100 years or so most of the worlds ammonia has been made by the Haber-Bosch process which requires a hydrogen source and because of the chemical kinetics of the process can only efficiently be done on a massive scale.
Interestingly leguminous plants do this much more efficiently via a "nitrogen fixing" enzyme complex. Earlier this year Japanese researchers published a method for making ammonia which is modeled on this process which could totally transform ammonia production. It was published in Nature but a simplified version of their work can be found here https://phys.org/news/2019-04-ammonia-production.html
Essentially ammonia is a much safer and easier way of transporting hydrogen than the massive energy cost of compressing hydrogen and shipping it in very high pressure tanks- let alone the safety issues.
True. There were a lot of big sells going through in the spring of 2018, and possibly before that. How does the figure quoted match the known Abramovich holding?