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Producing ammonia and fertiliser using wind power in Morris, Minnesota

ammoniaenergy.org

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Re: Producing ammonia and fertiliser using wind power in Morris, Minnesota

#71

Post by richardc323 »

pibaker wrote: post #41
richardc323 wrote: post #7

I grew up on an organic orchard, so don't get excited about artificial sources of nitrogen for agriculture and horticulture. It is better than getting fertiliser from fossil fuels, but it is still not great. My mind goes to energy storage. If it was a smart way to do that, people would probably be doing it, who knows. Well, someone wrote a paper about it in 2022: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/…

Our ability to artificially capture nitrogen and feed it to plants is why we are able to feed 8 billions souls and still suffer less hunger than our ancestors. You are free to grow your plants however you want on your property. But just keep in mind that "no fertilizer" is a luxury belief not affordable to the rest of humanity.

Yes, the Green Revolution. I agree it's not black and white, which may well be an ironic turn of phrase.

Re: Producing ammonia and fertiliser using wind power in Morris, Minnesota

#72

Post by icehawk »

hunterpayne wrote: post #43
kulahan wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they don’t. They remain subsidized. Solar surpassed fossil fuels in efficiency ages ago, and I don’t even LIKE solar. Fossil fuels have no redeeming qualities in the major energy sectors anymore, aside from ONE: the plants are VERY cheap to build.

"Solar surpassed fossil fuels in efficiency ages ago" You are going to have to explain this. Because there is no measurement of efficiency in which solar PV in Minnesota in efficient in any way. To produce a watt of electricity using natural gas actually produces less CO2 than a watt from solar that far north. So it isn't even more environmentally friendly. And its far more expensive. It uses far more energy. So I ha…

> To produce a watt of electricity using natural gas actually produces less CO2 than a watt from solar that far north

What about the watt after that? I still got the solar panel for that next watt, and with natural gas I have... well I don't have anything, I need more natural gas!

Re: Producing ammonia and fertiliser using wind power in Morris, Minnesota

#73

Post by andrekandre »

stymaar wrote: post #25
buckle8017 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fossil fuels remain more cost effective. The US isn't a centrally planned economy (sort of) so the more economical option wins.

Like it or not every, non-failed-state, modern economy is a centrally-planned one. The economy never lives in a vacuum, it's always a product of the institutions that govern them (regulations, subsidies, taxes, etc.) Something is always “the most cost-effective option” because the institutions made it so.

well, just to add to that: you cant even have any kind of economy at scale without some central authority to enforce property rights or contract law etc anyways...

Re: Producing ammonia and fertiliser using wind power in Morris, Minnesota

#74

Post by richardc323 »

analog31 wrote: post #33
richardc323 wrote: post #7

I grew up on an organic orchard, so don't get excited about artificial sources of nitrogen for agriculture and horticulture. It is better than getting fertiliser from fossil fuels, but it is still not great. My mind goes to energy storage. If it was a smart way to do that, people would probably be doing it, who knows. Well, someone wrote a paper about it in 2022: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/…

The "organic" designation does not preclude using artificial fertilizer. Just no pesticides.

It depends who's definition of organic you are using. Demeter and Biogro, which are the certifications I am familiar with prohibit most conventional artificial fertilisers.

Re: Producing ammonia and fertiliser using wind power in Morris, Minnesota

#75

Post by ch4s3 »

jimnotgym wrote: post #37
ch4s3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically the natural gas is the source of the hydrogen. Usually natural gas is burned to form steam to split more natural gas (CH4) into carbon and hydrogen. That’s traditionally cheaper than electrolysis.

Unless your electricity is 'free', presumably?

Free has a habit of changing the economics. This is good news, decoupling ammonia from natural gas would make agriculture more resilient to Middle East disruptions.

Re: Producing ammonia and fertiliser using wind power in Morris, Minnesota

#76

Post by richardc323 »

oconnore wrote: post #14
richardc323 wrote: post #7

I grew up on an organic orchard, so don't get excited about artificial sources of nitrogen for agriculture and horticulture. It is better than getting fertiliser from fossil fuels, but it is still not great. My mind goes to energy storage. If it was a smart way to do that, people would probably be doing it, who knows. Well, someone wrote a paper about it in 2022: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/…

There are two camps: people who are fans of Haber Bosch because it feeds most of humanity, and absolute psychopaths.

That is a bit extreme. Wanting to preserve the environment isn't the same as wanting to let everyone starve, it's quite the opposite. Spend a minute or two looking up soil erosion, and extrapolate 100 years.

Re: Producing ammonia and fertiliser using wind power in Morris, Minnesota

#77

Post by Gibbon1 »

jimnotgym wrote: post #42

For those trying to work out the economics. 1 ton of urea is apparently worth $451 I think I would need to know the capex cost to go any further, but my gut feel is this is really a technical demonstration rather than an instant goldmine.

You need about 50-55kwh to produce a kg of hydrogen.

Urea molar mass is 60. And the formula is CO(NH2)2. 4 moles of hydrogen per mole. So 6.6% hydrogen by weight.

1000kg of urea needs then 66.6kg of hydrogen. At 55khw per kg of hydrogen you need 3666 kwh per ton of urea. (not counting other energy inputs).

At $0.05/kwh that's $183 for the hydrogen input.

Worth mentioning the internet says fertilizer is about 7% of an average farm budget and only 1% of the cost of food at the store.

I'm on the side of sure no problem really when it comes to green nitrogen fertilizer.

Re: Producing ammonia and fertiliser using wind power in Morris, Minnesota

#78

Post by laughing_man »

Animats wrote: post #4

There are press releases which link to other press releases. Found the technical paper from 2021.[1] The ammonia plant is built for intermittent operation, so it can shut down or reduce output when there's no wind. No need to store much electrical energy. Storage tanks hold the ammonia. It's a reasonable idea, but is it cost-effective? No numbers are given. Still, fertilizer independence alone is worth something. You…

The press release says they use the wind energy to produce hydrogen. Seems like you could store the hydrogen and always have the plant running at capacity as long as the average power produced by the wind turbine(s) was enough.

Re: Producing ammonia and fertiliser using wind power in Morris, Minnesota

#79

Post by thelastgallon »

strictnein wrote: post #60
epistasis wrote: post #2

Perfect project for rural Minnesota, that needs the ammonia, but also has a surprising amount of solar colocated with farms. And a fair amount of wind in the southwest. However there are far far larger projects going on over the world. China is building multiple GW of wind and solar to power a massive ammonia/green hydrogen site right now. I frequently hear of sites in Spain in the hundreds of MW range. The US has be…

> hyper-conservatism to protect fossil fuel interests The #1 state, by far, in terms of solar, wind, and energy storage is Texas. There is likely no other state that is also as pro-fossil fuels as Texas. It's also a state known for its conservative stance on almost everything. But the market doesn't care and it flourished without government intervention or significant aid, simply because Texas let's you build things,…

Its mostly because of this guy(1): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J._Osborne

"Renewable Energy Policy. In 1984 Osborne co-founded the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association (now Alliance) (TREIA)[1] with two partners and worked with other key individuals and organizations to bring the nascent renewable energy industry to the attention of policymakers on the state and federal level. "

This was a unplanned, unanticipated freak accident that gave Texas an early transmission for wind power. Because most of the farmers are republican, they built a transmission network for the farmers. This led to CREZ (Competitive Renewable Energy Zones), the goal of which is to integrate the wind supply regions with the large demand centers. Rich farmers are a much larger voting block than the dozens of fossil fuel billionaires.

The bragging by Texas about renewables is entirely accidental and is a side-effect of building a transmission network for the rich farmers. Not because Texas runs markets efficiently, pro-business or pro-efficiency or anything like that. Thats just nonsense.

Today, Texas tries very hard to limit renewables, but fails. They only want coal and natural gas, and use the legislation and state money to fund them: https://www.powermag.com/texas-moves-forward-with-5-38b-in-l...

(1) I think this is the guy, but am not entirely sure. I read an article about this curious case of renewables in Texas, a long time back. It is hard to find that article, I've been searching for an hour and most of what I find credits politicians for CREZ. But there was a private person who made this possible. I'm assuming its this guy.

Re: Producing ammonia and fertiliser using wind power in Morris, Minnesota

#80

Post by colechristensen »

epistasis wrote: post #21
buckle8017 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fossil fuels remain more cost effective. The US isn't a centrally planned economy (sort of) so the more economical option wins.

For a very very long time, fracking was not economical, and only through massive government investment did it become cost effective. Same goes for renewables, and electrolyzers. All evidence points to a future with renewable energy costing a small fraction of fossil fuels, and electrolyzers being cheaper than hydrogen from gas. But the future needs to be built. We can either lose out and buy the tech from others, or…

Where solar in particular really drops the cost of electricity is towards the end and beyond its design lifetime of 25-30 years. That's how a bunch of the costs are calculated and it's turning out systems are continuing to produce significantly beyond that. Paired with inflation, this makes old systems produce extremely low cost electricity.

It's not about tech now, it's just commodity install base making sure to ride the adoption curve at a healthy pace which people are more than happy to do just because of greed.

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