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Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer

energiesmedia.com

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Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer

#91

Post by inigyou »

jandrese wrote: post #47
MariusGjerd wrote: post #36

the talk about "electricity can do things" misses whats actually interesting here. Working in the energy sector, the hard problem is rarely generating the power, it is getting it into the grid. connection queue runs for years and turbines regularly get curtailed when the grid c anncot absorb more. A flexible load behind the meter, like an electrolyzer making ammonia on site, monetizes energy that would otherwise be w…

A nice thing about the fertilizer is that it is only needed for a few weeks out of the year, which means it can be produced intermittently and stored without causing problems. If there are two weeks of non-production due to weather that isn't an issue so long as it averages out over the year. One could imagine a plant that only runs when the electricity is almost free.

Well, the problem of storage blew up Beirut. I wouldn't say it isn't a problem. It's manageable if you pay attention to storage conditions which they didn't for several years.

Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer

#92

Post by inigyou »

jmyeet wrote: post #24

Some will criticize renewable energy because the power output is spiky. This sort of thing is why that doesn't matter. There are plenty of things you can do with excess power. There's been research in manufacturing gasoline from the air. It's not economical to do for its own sake but when we're talking about excess power, that's not really a factor. Fertilizer is a new one (to me). But it makes sense. You'll still ne…

Sadly I suspect crypto mining may be more profitable

Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer

#94

Post by inigyou »

trollbridge wrote: post #88
inigyou wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's called farming. But it doesn't work any more because the farmlords (landlords who own farms) extract 98% of your would-be profit. You know why so many farmers can't financially withstand a single bad year? That's why - not personal irresponsibility.

What are you talking about? Farmland usually leases for $50-$200 an acre per year.

Equipment too?

Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer

#95

Post by epistasis »

NuclearPM wrote: post #74
epistasis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. That's not the equation. The only thing that matters is the final cost, including capex. Utilities are pooling the wool over the eyes of PUCs and the media is not doing what it needs to show how the utilities are screwing customers because the media is illiterate... But what China and other places (eg Spain) for this sort of ammonia is to place generation and batteries right at the ammonia site, bypassin…

Pooling?

Ugh, too late to edit some serious typos/autocorrect errors:

pooling --> pulling

illiterate --> innumerate.

Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer

#96

Post by pfdietz »

inigyou wrote: post #89
pfdietz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haber-Bosch require continuous input of hydrogen, but aside from that it is a net source of power. The reaction is exothermic and can provide more than enough work to drive compressors that pressurize the reactants.

Is that true in practice or just in theory?

Looking more closely, it's not true at all. So ignore what I wrote. I was confused by compressors being driven by steam from the SMR plant that made hydrogen from natural gas.

Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer

#97

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

dataflow wrote: post #65
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, absolutely. Look at places like Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East that run on desalinization plants. It's energy, all the way down.

You're saying every population everything on earth could solve their freshwater problem with desalination if only they had cheap energy? No other issues here besides lack of energy?

Try thinking of this another way to help you understand. How does nature get most of us surface freshwater to begin with? Energy from the sun heats ocean water which causes evaporation into the atmosphere (aka "natural desalinization") and then wind patterns in the atmosphere (also generated by energy from the sun) cause clouds to move over land where water vapor eventually condenses and falls as precipitation, filling lakes and rivers.

So the equation is basically energy input from the sun creates freshwater from salt water and transports it over land. Humans can, and have, replicated this process artificially, the limiting factor just being the cost of energy.

Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer

#98

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

halestock wrote: post #23
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #4

This sentence really bugged me: > A Minnesotan wind turbine shows that wind energy can produce more than just electricity. No, it doesn't. It's just that electricity can be used to do lots of things, including splitting water as an input to ammonia production. What this article shows is that nearly all of the potential "shortages" in materials on earth are really just energy shortages (with some small number of notab…

Just wait until you hear about the underwater turbine that can do far more than generate electricity! https://energiesmedia.com/texas-turbine-under-water-more-tha...

Thanks. Ugh, now I feel bad for wasting time on this AI-generated slop.

Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer

#99

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

doodlebugging wrote: post #48

I read that article. I don't know why. It was a difficult read. Nearly every sentence has a bold-face phrase. There are no paragraphs, only sentences. It is borderline incoherent and very off-putting. That style article needs to eliminated. Surely there is a better information source for this site and process than this online rag.

It's AI-generated dog shit, and I feel bad for getting roped in by it. Another commenter noticed there is another article on that site that's almost identical despite being about a different topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49049204

Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer

#100

Post by AnthonyMouse »

trollbridge wrote: post #90
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or cut out the middle man and get your own solar. Who are the people in California paying $0.35/kWh to the power company when rooftop solar is less than a third of that?

Struggling families can’t buy their own off grid power generation. I take this one rather personally as a friend of mine has had his power shut off now for the last month. I set him up with a gasoline generator which seems like the opposite of green. Electric should be very cheap and abundant.

> Struggling families can’t buy their own off grid power generation.

The premise is that the installment payments on the solar system are less than the monthly bill from paying the power company for the same amount of electricity. It can't be the thing they can't afford when it's the thing that costs less.

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