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Nitrogen electroreduction with almost 100% current-to-ammonia efficiency (2022)

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Re: Nitrogen electroreduction with almost 100% current-to-ammonia efficiency (2022)

#111

Post by fodkodrasz »

anon_cow1111 wrote: post #84

I need to ask this question for any chemical engineers currently reading this. I'm seeing people in the comments talking about how this could be applied to consumer vehicles, not just industry like cargo ships and agriculture. If I, the consumer, had unlimited access to cheap, unregulated liquid ammonia (as common as gasoline), how many precursor-steps am I away from having access to like... a LOT of high explosives?…

It is already very dangerous, no need to turn it into an explosive. It won't be given out for handling to untrained people.

Re: Nitrogen electroreduction with almost 100% current-to-ammonia efficiency (2022)

#112

Post by danans »

This could be a game changer for seasonal energy storage if it allows round trip efficiencies of even say 60%. Ammonia has been demonstrated as a fuel in existing natural gas turbines [1] at combustion efficiencies up to 99%.

1. https://nh3fuelassociation.org/2018/12/07/performance-of-amm....

Re: Nitrogen electroreduction with almost 100% current-to-ammonia efficiency (2022)

#113

Post by hinkley »

danans wrote: post #112

This could be a game changer for seasonal energy storage if it allows round trip efficiencies of even say 60%. Ammonia has been demonstrated as a fuel in existing natural gas turbines [1] at combustion efficiencies up to 99%. 1. https://nh3fuelassociation.org/2018/12/07/performance-of-amm... .

Highly caustic to delicate tissues however, such as lung tissue.

Re: Nitrogen electroreduction with almost 100% current-to-ammonia efficiency (2022)

#114

Post by hinkley »

scythe wrote: post #103
londons_explore wrote: post #2

Big if true... This could enable fertilizer production with no CO2 emissions. The numbers in the paper suggest that it might prove cheaper than natural gas based production which is common today. Fertilizer production is 2.1% of all CO2 emissions right now.

Oh it's true. But as the paper states, they produced 3.9 millimoles — 0.068 grams — of ammonia in 96 hours. So I'm not exactly holding my breath. It's a big improvement over previous methods, but there's still a long way to go.

Definitely hold your breath around people trying to produce ammonia.

Re: Nitrogen electroreduction with almost 100% current-to-ammonia efficiency (2022)

#115

Post by HPsquared »

snewman wrote: post #106
HPsquared wrote: post #3

What does the term "current-to-ammonia efficiency" mean here? I imagine it would refer to the specificity of the reaction, i.e. that 99% of the electrons passing through the system are used in the main reaction, and The abstract doesn't go into detail on energy efficiency and a comparison to the old method using gas. For instance, would this method result in less CO2 emissions using regular grid electricity, or would…

Bear in mind that grid electricity is getting cleaner over time. We need to skate to where the puck is going, which is 100% clean electricity. Now is an excellent time to be developing and preparing to scale technologies that work well with clean electricity.

Yes - in theory, it's probably pretty efficient. Just would be interesting to see how it compares. We know it has good Coulombic efficiency, but that's only half the picture - at least for energy storage / synfuel applications.

Re: Nitrogen electroreduction with almost 100% current-to-ammonia efficiency (2022)

#116

Post by doctorwho42 »

aifooh7Keew6xoo wrote: post #33
RetroTechie wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just fertilizer: "In addition to its use in the fertilizer and chemical industries, ammonia is currently seen as a potential replacement for carbon-based fuels and as a carrier for worldwide transportation of renewable energy." Long-term grid storage? Publication: 22 July 2022 Anyone know if maybe some pilot / small scale production facility has been set up in the mean time? I've read about a farm that produced i…

Where are all the people that complain about the dangers and impracticality of hydrogen when the topic of using a corrosive gas that poses an immediate danger to life and health at concentrations as low as 300 ppm as a fuel comes up? They're trying to avoid using the stuff in industrial refrigeration it's so nasty, and yet here we are gleefully considering rolling down the highway with it in the cheapest vessel indus…

Replace highway infrastructure with train infrastructure that is powered by overhead lines. Build out the power grid to support that, and blanket the country with new rail lines that are nationalized and run as a public utility.

Result, reduces carbon footprint of travel - land shipping - ability to build out modern towns - etc

Toss in a bill to require all train lines to also install national fiber. You now have enabled the revitalization of large swaths of the county.

Re: Nitrogen electroreduction with almost 100% current-to-ammonia efficiency (2022)

#117

Post by gofhwgwidi »

applied_heat wrote: post #92
colechristensen wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California produces about half of its electricity from renewables, mostly solar. We’re decades away from 100%, but how long away are we nationally from 50%, 65%, 90%, 99%? As solar production ramps up to higher percentages there is going to be more and more peak power in excess of demand. Industrial scale electrochemistry is going to be one of the alternatives to batteries that’s going to be developed. Already nitrog…

What factory that produces X is so cheap to build in relation to the cost of energy on a daily basis that it is worth producing less X at different times of day due to the price of energy? The cost of the energy is usually such a small component of total costs it is not worth altering behavior for daily small energy price fluctuations, and nobody is advocating for energy prices to change by 10x throughout the day.

Aluminum

Re: Nitrogen electroreduction with almost 100% current-to-ammonia efficiency (2022)

#118

Post by jillesvangurp »

pfdietz wrote: post #11
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #4

This would be a gigantic breakthrough if true and scalable, correct? Most ammonia production for fertilizer currently uses natural gas, and of clean sources of electricity with such a high yield of ammonia production would have a huge worldwide impact. So is there something I'm missing?

Not if the energy efficiency were poor, compared to electrolytic hydrogen into a conventional Haber-Bosch process. And remember hydrogen is very storable, so that process could buffer renewable intermittency and keep the H-B plant running continuously. Electrolyzers are getting cheap.

Actually storing and transporting hydrogen are technical challenges. It takes up a lot of space and hydrogen molecules are so small they leak through a lot of materials. Not impossible but you need a lot of expensive infrastructure to handle it.

Most hydrogen produced today is consumed very close to where it is produced. Also energy storage and fuel type use cases rank very low on Michael Liebreich's hydrogen ladder. That's a nice tool that ranks different uses of hydrogen by their economic feasibility and overhead. Chemically binding it to something else to store it works of course. Ammonia (NH3) is common for this; and in fact the biggest use case for hydrogen. People have speculated about using that as a fuel. It's much easier to store and transport. And of course these chemical transformations also have an energy cost.

Re: Nitrogen electroreduction with almost 100% current-to-ammonia efficiency (2022)

#119

Post by Gare »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #71
aifooh7Keew6xoo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are all the people that complain about the dangers and impracticality of hydrogen when the topic of using a corrosive gas that poses an immediate danger to life and health at concentrations as low as 300 ppm as a fuel comes up? They're trying to avoid using the stuff in industrial refrigeration it's so nasty, and yet here we are gleefully considering rolling down the highway with it in the cheapest vessel indus…

> danger to life and health at concentrations as low as 300 ppm Well its not like you can put any petrochemical fuels in you coffee

This is for ammonia inhalation.

Re: Nitrogen electroreduction with almost 100% current-to-ammonia efficiency (2022)

#120

Post by japanuspus »

aaron695 wrote: post #24
londons_explore wrote: post #2

Big if true... This could enable fertilizer production with no CO2 emissions. The numbers in the paper suggest that it might prove cheaper than natural gas based production which is common today. Fertilizer production is 2.1% of all CO2 emissions right now.

> Big if true... Could you explain exactly why you would say this? Working past their fake news headlines like 100%. Hydrogen is almost 100% and that's not big if true. We are decades away for renewable electricity only for our electric needs. Then you have oil and many other things electric can replace which are worse than gas. What about this is big? In a dream world of unlimited electricity everything is easy, lik…

At current costs, a price-optimal solar/wind/battery mix for handling existing electricity needs would have on the order of 400% overcapacity. All that extra electricity is what will power the hydrogen-generation.

The main challenge is building cheap electrolysers without so much regard to efficiency, in order to use all the power when available. Most commercially available electrolysers today are expensive and cannot ramp up and down quickly.

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