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Industrial ammonia emits more CO2 than other chemical-making reactions (2019)

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Re: Industrial ammonia emits more CO2 than other chemical-making reactions (2019)

#51

Post by ZeroGravitas »

freemint wrote: post #42
hannob wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Replacing the hydrogen source at similar scales with electrolysis is plausible with base load power generation. There is no need to tie this to base load power generation. In fact, quite the opposite: A lot of the electrolysis projects and the funding happening right now is targetted at using electrolysis as a compensation for fluctuating renewables. This makes sense: We have cheap, green electricity, however havin…

This works because electrolysis equipment is cheap, so shutting it down half time barely increases total cost of ownership compared to the input electricity.

I don't think electrolysis equipment is particularly cheap, there's some excitement about cheaper alternatives coming to market and mass production that use cheaper materials.

But overall it's going to be the cheapest way to make hydrogen and then ammonia very soon. And the market has already seen that inevitable future, lots of right-wing Australian mining billionaires have jumped into the market hard for example.

The main saving is avoided carbon, which isn't priced in everywhere. But the sheer scale of ammonia production means it's easy to gradually introduce this as long as you spread the initial upfron cost across all the users (which is basically everyone).

It's a very mutually beneficial arrangement for renewables so the two things reinforce each other strongly and I think it'll be one of those things that moves faster than they expect.

Re: Industrial ammonia emits more CO2 than other chemical-making reactions (2019)

#52

Post by lcam84 »

rembicilious wrote: post #13
jackyinger wrote: post #5

This is very interesting from an agricultural perspective. According to the Wikipedia article for ammonia, “In the US as of 2019, approximately 88% of ammonia was used as fertilizers”. To me this is a very interesting and damning fact with regards to current dominant agricultural practices. Yet another reason that it would be beneficial to further redevelop closed loop nutrient systems. For instance, sewage solids fr…

Why is it damning that 88% of ammonia is used in fertilizer? Is their some other industry that ought to consume a larger percentage?

We could avoid this number by investing in soil preservation, nitrogen fixing plants, reduce meat consumption, even in concepts like humanure.

Re: Industrial ammonia emits more CO2 than other chemical-making reactions (2019)

#53

Post by HPsquared »

Gravityloss wrote: post #47

You could make ammonia on wind or solar farms in the middle of nowhere and get it via tanker a couple of times per year, obviating the need for expensive powerlines. Bonus: the tankers can run on ammonia fuel.

I don't know about ammonia, but aluminium (a similarly "energy-intensive" commodity) is produced in Iceland where they have lots of cheap geothermal energy. Similar situation, making use of a local energy source and exporting the embodied energy as a physical product.

Re: Industrial ammonia emits more CO2 than other chemical-making reactions (2019)

#54

Post by ZeroGravitas »

otherotherchris wrote: post #25
jandrewrogers wrote: post #7

Yes, this is the case due to the enormous scale of production. Replacing the hydrogen source at similar scales with electrolysis is plausible with base load power generation. The cost increase is a small integer factor, and in the bigger scheme of things is likely something we can adapt to at least for agriculture. An obvious challenge is that we don't have available green base load power -- nuclear, hydro, or geothe…

If electrolysis can be made cheaper (E-TAC looks promising) you can run it at a reduced duty cycle on excess solar and wind power whenever they are available. You can also produce hydrogen at the point of generation if water is available, and store it using the now obsolete natural gas distribution network.

People need to flip this excess electricity idea.

The cheapest power is solar and wind. If you build an ammonia plant, the cheapest way to get the power you need is to build solar and wind.

You can sell some excess to other grid users when you have too much, and you can stop production on very short timescales to help balance the grid during peaks but overall you'll be able to predict energy production years in advance and know upfront how much it'll cost you. Those financing benefits are a strong driver of the move away from fossil fuels.

This is already happening with actual plants, they build the renewables and the plant at the same time. It just makes sense.

So, green hydrogen will overall be a source of cheap 'excess' renewables power on the grid, not mopping up excess from other providers.

Re: Industrial ammonia emits more CO2 than other chemical-making reactions (2019)

#55

Post by peterburkimsher »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #7

Yes, this is the case due to the enormous scale of production. Replacing the hydrogen source at similar scales with electrolysis is plausible with base load power generation. The cost increase is a small integer factor, and in the bigger scheme of things is likely something we can adapt to at least for agriculture. An obvious challenge is that we don't have available green base load power -- nuclear, hydro, or geothe…

Let's make ammonia in Siberia to catch the methane from the melting tundra!

Re: Industrial ammonia emits more CO2 than other chemical-making reactions (2019)

#56

Post by ben_w »

vba616 wrote: post #45
ben_w wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, 40% is nowhere near enough of a CO2 reduction, we need ~99.9% over slightly more than that timeframe; second, that’s a zero child worldwide policy, and doing that would require violence; and third, you have to ask who you’re doing this for if you’re not doing it for the next generation. I am now curious what graph of age vs. CO2 emissions looks like for various populations…

I didn't mean it as a serious suggestion, just that it's technically possible to reduce the population that much without killing anyone. Are you serious that to reduce CO2 "enough" world population would have to be under 8 million people? When the Industrial Revolution started, mid 1700s, world population was something like 800 million, wasn't it? Why would it be necessary to return to the world of 4000 BC, which is…

Quality of life. We don’t want to live like we did in the 1700s — 95% of “rich” nations back then were subsistence farmers, and even the richest kings were in many ways worse off than minimum wage G7 citizens today.

This is also why I think the solution is to focus on the CO2 itself and not on the people. Green power, green sources for chemical feedstocks, are much faster and less violent than population limits; and also lower population doesn’t itself guarantee lower greenhouse gases because everyone might just use more.

Re: Industrial ammonia emits more CO2 than other chemical-making reactions (2019)

#57

Post by tda »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #3
kurthr wrote: post #2

This is the well known Haber-Bosch process, "Between 75 and 90% of this ammonia goes toward making fertilizer, and about 50% of the world’s food production relies on ammonia fertilizer." For those not looking to create a free account to login and view it: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-5f9t9...

It’s worth noting that the Haber process doesn’t require methane, methane is used as a source of hydrogen because it’s cheap and easy to use. Any source of hydrogen could work, but most of them are more energy intensive and thus more expensive or inefficient than just using methane. If you wanted to use nuclear or renewables, you just dedicate your energy production to electrolysis or whatever. Edit to add: also wort…

Define short term, if we really want I`m quite sure we can dramatically increase pv power generation in a few years. There are vast swathes of little used space in sunny environments. But you do need to invest proper amounts of money, just like we do for developing new fossil fuel sites. The investment for a new LNG field and liquefaction plant is in the order of USD 30-50B. We need to redirect such investments to PV and hydrolysis.

Re: Industrial ammonia emits more CO2 than other chemical-making reactions (2019)

#58

Post by vba616 »

ben_w wrote: post #56
vba616 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean it as a serious suggestion, just that it's technically possible to reduce the population that much without killing anyone. Are you serious that to reduce CO2 "enough" world population would have to be under 8 million people? When the Industrial Revolution started, mid 1700s, world population was something like 800 million, wasn't it? Why would it be necessary to return to the world of 4000 BC, which is…

Quality of life. We don’t want to live like we did in the 1700s — 95% of “rich” nations back then were subsistence farmers, and even the richest kings were in many ways worse off than minimum wage G7 citizens today. This is also why I think the solution is to focus on the CO2 itself and not on the people. Green power, green sources for chemical feedstocks, are much faster and less violent than population limits; and…

I don't understand.

How would two more orders of magnitude reduction make things better?

We don't want to go back to the 1700s, so going back to the dawn of history is better?

What would North Korea be able to produce without 2/3rds of its population and without China?

Re: Industrial ammonia emits more CO2 than other chemical-making reactions (2019)

#59

Post by 7952 »

fuoqi wrote: post #49
7952 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the hydrogen could be stored to allow for intermittent power supply? Make hydrogen when power is cheaper and there is spare. Also, the continuous supply of power is exactly what the grid is designed to do. Availability of cheap nuclear or geothermal could change the economics. But the power is exactly the same if it comes from nuclear, renewables or battery storage.

With very-high-temperature reactors (one of potential paths for Generation IV reactors) you can produce hydrogen using reactor heat directly, bypassing the electricity conversion step, thus significantly improving efficiency of the process. And with sufficiently cheap hydrogen you would not be able to produce fertilizers, but also steel, another dominant CO2 source.

Oh I absolutely agree that nuclear is a brilliant choice for hydrogen production. And presumably it would allow nuclear to adjust electricity output whilst maintaining high utilisation and profitability.

But still I think there is a mistake in assuming that everything needs to be tightly coupled. The benefit of an electricity grid and storable fuels is that you have flexibility.

Re: Industrial ammonia emits more CO2 than other chemical-making reactions (2019)

#60

Post by ZeroGravitas »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #3
kurthr wrote: post #2

This is the well known Haber-Bosch process, "Between 75 and 90% of this ammonia goes toward making fertilizer, and about 50% of the world’s food production relies on ammonia fertilizer." For those not looking to create a free account to login and view it: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-5f9t9...

It’s worth noting that the Haber process doesn’t require methane, methane is used as a source of hydrogen because it’s cheap and easy to use. Any source of hydrogen could work, but most of them are more energy intensive and thus more expensive or inefficient than just using methane. If you wanted to use nuclear or renewables, you just dedicate your energy production to electrolysis or whatever. Edit to add: also wort…

"cheap" in the same sense as free parking in cities, as in "someone else pays the cost". And the "someone else" in these cases is actually us a.k.a not cheap, but rather pointlessly wasteful.
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