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- Hacker News
- Use Solar/Wind and convert it to green hydrogen or green ammonia. We've reached the limits of pumped hydro and batteries are not dirt cheap yet. Green hydrogen and ammonia solve multiple problems. Both are fossil fuel products now.
Hydrogen is corrosive and explosive, next to impossible to store/transport safely. Green Hydrogen for immediate consumption at industries that require high heat and electricity is not an option.
Green ammonia for fertilizer and as energy storage.
With abundant oversupply of solar, we can start building alternatives to all fossil fuels.
- So basically: wind generators power electrolysis to create hydrogen, the hydrogen is fed to a normal Haber-Bosch plant which is still powered by coal or gas. So basically the wind power is just replacing the carbon footprint of a single input (hydrogen) to a H-B plant?by umvi
- 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.
by jimnotgym - [dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49048819
- China operates a massive green hydrogen and ammonia facility in Chifeng, which is powered entirely by off-grid wind and solar. The site already produces 320,000 tonnes of green ammonia annually.
This is going to be the century of China...
In contrast, this Minnesotan plant aims to scale up to 300 tonnes a year some day.
by Alien1Being - Ammonia production is more-or-less a synonym for "hydrogen production" chemically. The NH3 formation happens at a high temperature and pressure, but it doesn't use a lot of energy. Technically, it's even energetically favorable, but with the enthalpy of just -46kJ/mol. For comparison, water is -300 kJ/mol.
In other words, to split 1 mole (18 grams) of water into constituent parts (molecular hydrogen and oxygen), you need to invest at least 300 kJ of energy. If you then use 1 mole of hydrogen to produce ammonia, you can get back 30 kJ of energy.
This is chemically pretty much the best case from the thermodynamic efficiency standpoint (especially when you also factor in the entropy changes) with almost zero potential waste.
The kicker is, of course, that you need extremely high temperature and pressure for the reaction to work. And this is just hard to do on small scale. But that's not a theoretical barrier, but "just" a question of clever engineering! It's great to hear that we're solving these issues.
by cyberax - 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 can do this anywhere with wind or sun.
by Animats - 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 been pivotal in the invention of these technologies, but hyper-conservatism to protect fossil fuel interests is preventing us from getting the benefits as quickly as we should.
by epistasis