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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)

#91

Post by anon_cow1111 »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #87
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?…

What would it matter? I can go buy as much materials to make explosives as I want today. Or I could just purchase actual explosives at the sporting good store, like tannerite.

Yes, the difference is tannerite (by yield) is many times more expensive, and much easier to trace when someone buys hundreds of pounds of it from a sporting goods store. Similarly, a random individual buying a half ton of AN would probably trip some kind of alarm bells somewhere.

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

#92

Post by applied_heat »

colechristensen wrote: post #54
aaron695 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

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

#93

Post by anon_cow1111 »

vGPU wrote: post #90
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?…

You can buy ammonium nitrate in bulk. Much easier to turn into an explosive if that’s the point you’re making. Just say you’re opening a farm and off you go.

Well of course, but that only works once before you get traced and caught, might still be acceptable for the aforementioned crazy guy but I assume most others would rather blend in with the 50 million people buying gas on any given day.

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

#94

Post by Horffupolde »

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?…

Not a reasonable path.

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

#95

Post by totetsu »

lazide wrote: post #78
alwayslikethis wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction: Ammonia is not flammable since the flash point is significantly above room temperature. It would only be explosive if you consider the pressure vessel exploding, but we also have natural gas powered cars which also have pressurized cylinders. The main real issue is the toxicity.

Nope. Anhydrous ammonia between 18-25% is literally ‘explodes like gas vapor’ type explosive/flammable. [ https://www.worksafebc.com/en/resources/health-safety/risk-a... .] [ https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/standardinterpretations/1994-... .] It does have a higher ignition point than gas. But one a spark can definitely reach. It’s been a common problem in industry where ammonia gets used a lot (refrigeration in partic…

Wasn’t that what happened on the docks in Beirut? Or were their fireworks stored next to it that time

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

#96

Post by lazide »

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…

I don’t think either is a good fit really, if that helps.

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

#97

Post by lazide »

anon_cow1111 wrote: post #93
vGPU wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy ammonium nitrate in bulk. Much easier to turn into an explosive if that’s the point you’re making. Just say you’re opening a farm and off you go.

Well of course, but that only works once before you get traced and caught, might still be acceptable for the aforementioned crazy guy but I assume most others would rather blend in with the 50 million people buying gas on any given day.

Anhydrous ammonia is even more illegal in most places to get - apparently it’s a precursor to meth production or something?

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

#98

Post by nick222226 »

amluto wrote: post #82
alwayslikethis wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is important to note that hydrogen, due to the small size of the molecule, is really hard to contain as a gas. Moreover, leaked hydrogen gas is an indirect but potent greenhouse gas via interfering with the degradation of existing methane in the atmosphere. If we leak enough hydrogen, we might not be helping the climate very much. I was once in a presentation which claimed formic acid to be a better alternative, b…

There were some recent articles suggesting that there may be enough natural hydrogen seeping out of the ground to supply all of humanity’s energy needs. It seems a bit unlikely that leakage of hydrogen from fuel systems would matter much in comparison.

How about radon, is that fissible?

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

#99

Post by lazide »

seventytwo wrote: post #88
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 only needs to be as safe as fossil fuels, or even slightly less safe, if the benefits are higher. This always bothers me. People freak out about LiIon battery failures, or hydrogen, or ammonia, or nuclear power. But here we are with an entire economy riding on an explosive, firey, dirty fuel that is already causing global climate problems. Safety concerns should be kept on-par with what we have today. Let’s not th…

Fueling up with ammonia is roughly as dangerous as fueling up with concentrated pesticide, on the health risk scale. It’s much more toxic than gasoline.

And also flammable/explosive.

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

#100

Post by lazide »

totetsu wrote: post #95
lazide wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Anhydrous ammonia between 18-25% is literally ‘explodes like gas vapor’ type explosive/flammable. [ https://www.worksafebc.com/en/resources/health-safety/risk-a... .] [ https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/standardinterpretations/1994-... .] It does have a higher ignition point than gas. But one a spark can definitely reach. It’s been a common problem in industry where ammonia gets used a lot (refrigeration in partic…

Wasn’t that what happened on the docks in Beirut? Or were their fireworks stored next to it that time

Different (but related) chemical. That was ammonium nitrate (fertilizer + blasting agent). Which ammonia is used to make at large scale.
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