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

cen.acs.org

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

#81

Post by 7952 »

pfdietz wrote: post #75
7952 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is nuclear a brilliant choice for hydrogen production? Hydrogen provides inherent storage, so energy sources will (aside from cost of electrolysers) be competing based on levelized cost -- and levelized cost of new nuclear sucks. High temperature electrolysis doesn't change this: it reduces the electrical power needed by maybe 25%, at the cost of a nuclear reactor that has to operate at 1000 C with all the materi…

I don't have the expertise to answer that at a technical level. I think it could be a good choice because it would help balance out intermittent sources like wind and solar. And give alternative revenue streams for nuclear power.

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

#82

Post by woliveirajr »

shroompasta wrote: post #6

Why is depopulation not even a consideration as a solution for climate change? Surely there are ethical ways to implement it. Or do the world's largest and wealthiest nations only care for their hold on economic power?

Covid could do that. But, somehow, people got so afraid on being in the depopulated side that the whole life become fuzzy nowadays. /S

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

#83

Post by pfdietz »

7952 wrote: post #81
pfdietz wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is nuclear a brilliant choice for hydrogen production? Hydrogen provides inherent storage, so energy sources will (aside from cost of electrolysers) be competing based on levelized cost -- and levelized cost of new nuclear sucks. High temperature electrolysis doesn't change this: it reduces the electrical power needed by maybe 25%, at the cost of a nuclear reactor that has to operate at 1000 C with all the materi…

I don't have the expertise to answer that at a technical level. I think it could be a good choice because it would help balance out intermittent sources like wind and solar. And give alternative revenue streams for nuclear power.

If it balances out renewables, it also then pushes new nuclear entirely out of the picture.

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

#84

Post by fuoqi »

pfdietz wrote: post #76
fuoqi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Haber-Bosch process used in ammonia production is done at high temperatures (400-500 °C), so you can use "hot" hydrogen to power it (i.e. to heat input nitrogen) and maybe even extract some of leftover energy in produced ammonia heat to generate electricity. Same with steel production, you don't need to cool hydrogen before using it, on the contrary, high temperatures are useful in such cases. Using "hot" hydroge…

HB consumes energy in its compressors, but releases that energy as heat on the catalyst. Hot hydrogen doesn't compress well, so you'd cool it beforehand.

For HB you need pressure of 250-350 bars, while existing PWRs routinely work with 150 bars of coolant pressure. I assume it's possible to produce hydrogen with the necessary pressure using VHTRs, i.e. you would get hydrogen already pressurized and hot. You would still need to run compressors on input water, but it's much easier than working with hydrogen later.

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

#85

Post by DonHopkins »

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…

Waiting for the Ammonia Shills to chime in that producing enormous amounts of ammonia that nobody actually needs will drive the development of green energy infrastructure.

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

#86

Post by cromka »

HPsquared wrote: post #53
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.

That's exactly what I read while traveling there, that this is why there's so many aluminum plants – because aluminium requires a lot of energy that they have for almost free, yet they cannot export (as electricity) due to their distance to potential markets.

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

#87

Post by sgent »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #31
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still use methane as your hydrogen source for ammonia production if you do CO2 capture and storage when you produce the hydrogen. This is often called blue hydrogen, as opposed to green hydrogen from electrolysis and gray hydrogen from methane witgout CO2 capture and storage. Most of the oil and gas companies are partly betting the farm on H2 from CH4 with CO2 capture and storage as a major source of energy i…

Many people regard CO2 capture and storage as an attempt by the oil and gas industry to be able to green-wash what they current do without actually having to change anything.

I don't really care if Exxon is the most valuable company in the world because they discover a way to capture CO2 out of the air and pump it into old wells.

Almost everyone agrees (finally!) global warming is an existential threat for humankind. If you start bringing up other random environmental concerns you lose supporters quickly.

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

#88

Post by [deleted] »

divbzero wrote: post #9

The article points out that ammonia generates far more emissions than any other single chemical compound [1] but it is still a fraction of cement [2]. [1]: https://cen.acs.org/content/dam/cen/97/24/WEB/09724-industri... [2]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02612-5

[deleted]

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

#89

Post by pfdietz »

hnhg wrote: post #19
mtsr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While nuclear has different pollution than fossil fuels, one can hardly call it green with the everlasting poison it produces.

Green is an unhelpful umbrella term IMO. We need to be specific. Even "low carbon" is vague and prone to abuse.

I was amused by other color coding for hydrogen, especially "turquoise hydrogen": hydrogen that is produced by pyrolysis of methane to hydrogen and carbon. This requires considerably less energy than conversion of water to hydrogen and oxygen. The carbon can then be buried so it doesn't oxidize.

The name comes from the combination of "green hydrogen" (electrolysis using non-fossil electricity) and "blue hydrogen" (methane reforming that avoids CO2 emission by capture and sequestration of the CO2).

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

#90

Post by [deleted] »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #51
freemint wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. T…

[deleted]
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