Ammonia versus hydrogen for internal combustion engines [Alternative energy]
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- Опубликовано: 24 окт 2024
- It's a battle royale! Who will come out on top? Will it be hydrogen or ammonia for alternative energy supremacy! Join alternative energy expert Greg Vezina to find out.
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Hey there and welcome back to Eggs. Today's guest is Ammonia and Alternative energy expert Greg Vezina.
This episode is a unique one for us in that it is a match that was totally inspired by the Eggs community. In recent months we have featured other alternative Energy Experts on the podcast including Andrew Murphey and Dr. Amit Roy to name a couple. Due to an outsized and unexpected reaction to those particular episodes by our community we've received a number of emails with more questions about the future of energy.
One such email came from listener Karim who sent this message, in part:
"Dear Eggs, My name is Karim and I have a question: What do you think of ammonia cars? Because there's a RUclips video about a 1981 Chevrolet Impala that had its V8 engine converted to run on ammonia, which is a mix of hydrogen with a little nitrogen, which makes the exhaust pipe cleaner and it's far cheaper than gasoline?"
The video he's referring to, as he continued in his note, was created in 2006 by CBC News in Canada and was later run internationally on CNN, featuring today's guest showcasing his then cutting edge technology. Indulge us for a second while we run the tape...
As you can see, even then, today's guest lived on the vanguard of Ammonia technology and the future of energy and is still a prominent leader in the space.
Thank you Karim for your note, and thanks to the community for making this connection happen. Joining us today for a lively discussion about Ammonia, hydrogen, and our world's energy future, please join us in welcoming to the show, Greg Vezina.
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Greg Vezina
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he's right, but the problem is making ammonia ("reverse cracking"), which is not easy to do with renewables.
Like locomotives. Toyota recently spoke of a ratio 1:6:30 meaning of every EV battery you could make 6 plug in hybrids or 30 regular hybrid
While it is technically possible to run an internal combustion engine on hydrogen or ammonia, it's a really bad idea. Using the difficult to store and expensive hydrogen fuel in an inherently inefficient internal combustion engine vehicle results in absurdly short driving ranges and insanely high fuel costs. Hydrogen fuel cell cars are more efficient so get reasonable ranges, but still have high fuel costs.
The advantage of ammonia is it is much easier to store as it liquifies under pressure, so it can achieve reasonable driving ranges with IC engines. Leak detection is very easy due to its distinctive odor. Unfortunately, it's even more expensive than hydrogen as a fuel, and produces extremely high NOx emissions.
Spot on. A Canadian fella years ago ran his car on straight ammonia he couldn’t find interest. Farmers inject ammonia into soil as fertilizer. Edison motors is proving a generator with an electric drive works for heavy hauling. Even with a diesel generator they calculate double the fuel mileage. Rock on keep up the good work
This is essentially the same fuel model as a plug-in/range-extended hybrid electric vehicle, where you have a fuel available to power a generator when the moderate-sized battery needs additional energy to power the drive-train. The only thing I would note is that using a combustion engine for your generator will likely be less efficient than a fuel cell for turning that fuel back into electricity.
Great observation! Thanks for tuning in!
@@EggsThePodcast Cost of fuel cell makes it a bad option for light duty vehicles. Check out the Mazda CX 30 with range extender Wankel engine. Ammonia would probably be a good option. Perhaps a 30% Hydrogen/70% Ammonia blend. Also, I wonder how a plasma spark plug may help with Ammonia only. TPS transient plasma ignition for SI.
Average American travels < 50 miles per day. Toyota et al. over engineer hybrids in 2022. I like the Mazda Mazda CX 30 with range extender Wankel engine. Get ~ 100/125 Miles with battery only and then use the range extender. Use it for heating and cooling, too. This guy hit the nail on the head. Also, many manufacturers already do a heat pump. For larger vehicles, Magna EtelligentForce powertrain system preserves strength and functionality of pickups and light commercial vehicles while providing fully electric power with a focus on cooling and power for sustained heavy load operation.
EtelligentForce features Magna’s eDrive technology at the front and its eBeam electrified beam axle at the rear. It is designed for high-payload vehicles, capable of towing up to 14,500 pounds - easily on par with its ICE counterparts in this truck segment. Just add a rotary engine such as a Wankel as well as Lithium Iron Phosphate and/or Sodium Ion Phosphate (circa 2025) with ~ 100 mile to 125 mile range. Again, this guy hit the nail on the head :) For heavy duty vehicles, you could also use the Blue Solutions Canada batteries. That could be deployed today with vehicles used for heavy use.
Could a Rotary Engine BILLET 4-Rotor or 3 rotor be used as a range extender and/or run off Ammonia? It is much less heavier than a diesel engine. It could work with the Blue Solutions Canada Lithium Poly solid state batteries that are available today?
@@shawnnoyes4620 While you may already know, I just want to note something on using ammonia as fuel in an engine. While adding hydrogen to an ammonia fuel mix can be advantageous when burning ammonia, you probably would not actually store two fuels. Just have an ammonia cracker to get the desired ratio of hydrogen. Of course if you can get an engine to operate well on pure ammonia, then that is also great.
Also, on any range extended EV, the generator will likely not need much variability in it's power output and can instead be optimally tuned for the most efficient power conversion since the battery can act as a buffer between generated power and usage.
I think what you have here is the prescription for hybrid 18-wheelers for long haul applications. You could also combine this tech with the direct ammonia to hydrogen for fuel cells tech to give your 18 wheeler its own charge station while the driver sleeps his mandated hours.
When he talks about “cracking” the ammonia, the point is, gasoline is not cracked or it would be and actual “gas” and not a liquid. I had read there was an Canadian who claimed to “crack” gasoline but I’ve never seen a follow up. That was over 15 years ago. Cracking hydrocarbons is difficult.
Agreed. Only difference is I would use capacitors for a buffer instead of batteries.
Have you seen that method in use? In your mind, why are capacitors a better solution (outside of the typical issues with batteries, sustainability and whatnot)? Thanks for watching!
Typical battery issues, size, and max current draw. I have been working on a fast and fuel efficient design. Basically, the engine has a little more power than required to drive the vehicle around, but the motors are much more powerful. That way you can achieve good fuel economy, and have 400 whp for passing, getting on the ramp, and having fun when you want. I figure a 1/4 mile capacitor bank would be sufficient. We all love power, but don't want to pay for the fuel to get it. Thanks for the response.
Nice. That is very nice tweek on the current theory. Very smart.
Advances in capacitor technology is making that very possible/Plausible.
This is exactly the type of stuff I've been thinking of. We're really into it. There's more.
Capacitors in series we already have them they work like a battery for the lag.
Great for cold climates, old long range big trucks.
So wich is the most efficient, easy and chep to crack the ammonia to produce hydrogen
Ammonia has some big challenges to overcome first, but it does hold great promise.
Ammonia engine N2O tailpipe emissions as low as 20ppm are equivalent to a gasoline engine greenhouse gases from CO2. N2O is 300x worse of a greenhouse gas than CO2.
That's just one issue. Ammonia is also a pretty dangerous chemical to human health, has a slow flame propagation and very high ignition temperature. It really isn't suited to cars but would be better in big marine applications.
But the nitrogen comes from the atmosphere anyway when you combine it with Methane to produce the Anhydrous amonia in the first place. So it goes back as N2 according to "google"
@@JordanLyon-w8e nope
Sodium pellets to be wrapped in Aluminum foils. Pellets to be admitted to closed chamber. Spray water in . Hydrogen will evolve for Engines and fuel cells. Effluent, Sdium Hydroxide can be electrolised to recover Sodium. Sodium is suitable as energy carrier as its storage and weight favourable.
What happens to the Aluminum?
So have electric motors to drive the vehicle and a zero emission ice running on hydrogen or ammonia to power the electric motors.
So a 50hp engine/generator powering a small battery pack which is driving the electric motors. Of course it would work and be quite simple, if…IF it is profitable to do so. And I mean profitable to car and fuel companies. I prefer gas/diesel and love the sound of open headers, but I recognize the quiet pleasures of an electric trolling motor on my boat.
So maybe the point is that there is a time and place for everything, and maybe it’s not a one size fits all solution?
@@EggsThePodcast Eggs-actly! lol. In a free market, demand drives production, to "force" anything is social engineering at best and fascism at worst.
This man could use a lesson on thermodynamics, theres a reason why hybrid cars use both a combustion engine and electric motor to power the vehicle and don't only use the gasoline motor to power it, that being every time you change the state of that electricity it wastes some as heat, combustion engines aren't very efficient as is, but using them to power an electric motor thats 99% efficient doesn't make the engine any more efficient, in fact it's less efficient to convert that kinetic energy into DC electricity, then to chemical energy, then partially back to DC electricity and partially putting it through a converter into AC then into an electric motor, every step of that loses energy, thing is combustion engines are really inefficient when changing speed and gears often, cause you are never in that sweet spot rpm, so we collect energy from the engine at times when its not needed as much and put it into a battery so we can use an electric motor to drive the car at times that would normally cause your rpm in the engine to be all over the place, that being mostly low speed driving, and we use it to assist the car when it's deemed more efficient to do so, that way when we have stable rpms it relies primarily on the gas engine which is working very efficiently, if you just use the engine to provide power for the batteries to then power a motor you will find it to be much less efficient because that conversion has to be used for every drop of power, and you will need a larger/less efficient engine to compensate which will use more fuel
Locomotives convert mechanical energy to electricity and back to mechanical energy. I bet you don't know why without using Google
You are correct. Without google, I have no idea. Feel free to save us a step and explain it here. Interesting stuff! Thanks. :)
@@EggsThePodcast
A clutch would burn out if it tried mating a rotating engine with a 0 RPM driveline connected to a mile long row of train cars
@@TqSNv9R0iG5Ckxew So what is powering the forward movement on the locomotive? Is it diesel to the wheels or electric? And if it's deisel what does the electric power? (Sorry for sounding stupid).
@@TqSNv9R0iG5Ckxew makes sense, i believe diesel electric submarines do the same thing, my point is just that it is not super efficient for a car, just a very different set of circumstances, very interesting tid bit though
Does this dry out the piston rings like alcohol?
Great question! Any experts out there have thoughts on the matter?
No lol some seals maybe
no, but ammonia attacks any alloy with copper in it so a careful check of a system would be nessesary for brass/copper and aluminium parts in or near the fuel system, but the rings would be fine
Very interesting, it’s difficult to listen to someone shouting at you for longer periods though.
Anyone who has used a cutting torch knows oxygen is necesary . HHO & lean burn diesel works .
Trains are electric with diesel powered generators very efficient
Thanks for this!
Why so complex? Just run the internal combustion engine on anhydrous ammonia. Current automobile engines programmed for ammonia run fine off it. They then emit no CO2 - ammonia engines emit water vapor and nitrogen gas. As in any ice small amounts of nitrogen oxides can be produced, which can be controlled in the same way as nitrogen oxides are now controlled.
Why over complicate it? Over complicating a simple concept raises prices for the consumer and can reduce reliability. Over complexity can turn a winning idea into a loser.
Mass production of ammonia is well understood and the needed H2 has been obtained by electrolysis commercially at a profit - the last ammonia plant that operated off hydro electricity closed just a few years ago.
Ammonia is cheaper than gasoline. I think the real reason we have not started the process of transition to an ammonia economy (which would be the simplest, most workable transition of our transportation system) is that it is the quickest way to fix things and the most likely to work well. Oil is owned by influential people who are politically very powerful. These people want all that oil to be burned before any transition occurs, regardless of the consequences for everyone else - otherwise they lose a significant part of their wealth. This is why nothing truly useful at reducing our carbon emisions ever happens.
What I gather as to why we don’t use it is for health reasons. An anhydrous ammonia leak is extremely hazardous to humans. The other thing is that the energy density per unit of fuel is about half that of diesel. That’s why it’s good to use with an electric drivetrain.
Anhydrous ammonia is lighter than air, it can be used to fill balloons which float like helium balloons. It is toxic, but when released outside it rises and disperses. Inside it can be quite dangerous. Outside it is very difficult to ignite ammonia, it ignites in a very narrow range tht is easiest to achieve in an internal combustion engine. While it is toxic if you are quite close to an outdoors leak, gasoline fumes are alsoquite toxic to the nervous system yet we simply accept that as a risk of driving. Also there are a number of people who burn to death in accidents every year in the United States, we also accept that. Anhydrous ammonia will very, very rarely ignite and virtually never explode, it likely would lead to less fatalities than we already accept as normal, the fatalities would likelybe less but would be of a different nature, there will be less fatal explosions. It would, as you pointed out, require fuel tanks of about 1/3 greater volume than we are used to for the same range, it would be cheaper per mile, renewable, and less polluting though. Anhydrous ammonia was about $0.80/gallon when I checked last, it is more now due to the war in Ukraine etc, but it is a well understood technology that can be produced for less than we paynow for gasoline. It wins from every angle, the fact that it is never seriously considered is, in my opinion, purposeful and a crime.
As cheap as anhydrous ammonia is as a bulk commodity now, it can only get cheaper with cheaper sources of base load electricity as is expected via further development of wind, solar, and gen 4 nuclear power. High temp nuclear is particularly useful for the process heat used for haber bosch ammonia production..
The answers to our problems are obvious to those who are trained in the appropriate physical sciences, it is not chance, imho, that the obvious solutions are never considered. EG a lot of money is spent to find a substance that can store hydrogen and we are not allowed to use the substance we have had for over 50 years that perfectly works to store hydrogen, it is lithium hydride, our government bans the use of it in hydrogen storage because it is a substance used in the production of h-bombs as a source of hydrogen for the fusion reaction. Again the human community's political class has shot us in the foot. We avoid the correct substance as a matter of law and spend money trying to develop storage hydrides from the wrong part of the periodic table.
Research dollars are handed out for pointless research that does no help at all in the end, the companies that get the majority of the research dollars and grants are the ones able to contribute the most to our election campaigns and it is all legal. It turns my stomach.@@jamescampbell8482
The problem is ammonia mixed with a oxidizer creates a very stinky rocket fuel/ Ammonia percolate is used to launch most of America's missiles. The exhaust would be a stinky mustard yellow fumes / smoke..
Everything OK, but how would you convert ammonia to H2? This is small but important detail they don't mention...
platinized silica fibre catalyst is the go to method i think , or platinized carbon particles or fibre , but ammonia will just burn in a ic engine easy so its not a problem, like lpg , ammonia is compareable to lpg in liquid form in pressure required and temprature, probably could just pump nh3 into a car with an lpg system with a small adjustment to air fuel ratio and she would run good!
Everything platinized is very expensive - dont you think?
Fortunately Plasma Kinetics has developed a Hydrogen Metal Hydride solid form of stored H and it is released from the solid form by heating it with a laser. They’re really close to releasing a commercial version and there are vehicles being tested on the road with the beta of this project….
just described every diesel train on the rails in the country except for the elec storage part
I dunno, compressed hydrogen works. Not to mention that you could setup a heat exchanger at points exiting the fuel tanks where the pressure decreases to take advantage of the cooling effect to essentially have "free cooling" for the HVAC system. It would be the polar opposite to a combustion vehicle where there is waste heat on tap (assuming you are running a fuel cell). So while there would be losses compressing the gas, some of that energy could be harnessed again as the hydrogen decompresses. If we had a hydrogen combustion engine, this would mean that you would have no need for seperate heating and cooling systems, just heat exchangers. Waste engine heat for winter, waste cooling for summer. Heating and cooling on tap where it is required with relative simplicity. No more AC compressors or resistive heaters, etc. You could use the cold from the tanks to help cool the engine potentially which could reduce the size of the radiator and allow for increased aerodynamic efficiency. This could yield greater fuel efficiency which would alleviate the need for massive fuel tanks. The main issue I see with fuel cells is their need for advanced air filtration to prevent fuel cell fouling. A combustion engine is much less sensitive to dust and dirt. There is a Chinese built hydrogen combustion hybrid engine that was developed that has some impressive specifications and sounds like it is almost exactly like a Toyota Prius in how it functions. Add some of these heating/cooling subsystems I have suggested and you can further increase efficiency. And for those concerned about the dangers of hydrogen, I would suggest you take time to reflect on the dangers of gasoline. A leak in a gasoline tank will result in pooling fuel which is extremely dangerous. A leak in a hydrogen tank will result in the hydrogen almost immediately dissipating upward (remember it is the lightest element and extremely bouyant). So I would argue the hydrogen is much safer than gasoline and potentially even safer than a BEV with a compromised battery.
Great info! Thanks for sharing!
Hydrogen could be recovered on the fly just prior to the moment of combustion. Rather than having a metal tank to store the hydrogen,a plastic tank the size of 2 liters could store the hydrogen in a gaseous form. And then the hydrogen can just be burned off in a regular combustion engine. Moreover, since the byproduct of burning hydrogen is water it would become a great benefit to drought stricken areas such as Arizona and California. Because every car burning hydrogen will have water droplets coming out of the exhaust pipe. The sun will heat that up and creates clouds and then rain down on those drought stricken areas.
The only problem is how does the government tax us by having cars burn hydrogen. Do you see the EV cars are taxed on the electricity put back into the batteries from EV charging stations. But by having a hydrogen powered car they’d have to tax water. And we could all get by that tax by just peeing into the fuel tank. So that problem has to be solved for the government to buy into the idea of having hydrogen powered cars. Personally I think if you own a hydrogen powered car then at the end of the year you would have to pay a fee on your taxes, so that money then goes towards road maintenance and such.
We just had a guest, Stacey Smith, talking about solid state hydrogen storage, eliminating the need for tanks altogether. Might be of interest to you.
@@EggsThePodcast can you send me the link?
@@Dream.big.dreams ruclips.net/video/VPdPOcHkrkc/видео.html
Where do you get your ammonia? Just a humble question?
they make it from natural gas
@@sandman708
You mean they are making the hydrogen from natural gas, via steam reforming. This means they are releasing at least 6 kg CO2 per kg hydrogen. Now we have the hydrogen. And how to get ammonia from this hydrogen? Haber Bosch?
Fuel cells sound good, I was very excited when I first heard about then 25 years ago. The problem is there expense because of rare metals, and why are they called rare metals. Unless we find a way to make fuel cells with materials
That are more abundant we will in short time face the same problems we face today with gasoline. It is more likely that a battery that is safer,efficient, recyclable there are now batteries that fit the bill better than Lithium Ion.
That will work for cars but got trucks (18 wheelers) battery electric does not hold out much promise.
Canadian PM should listen to this
unless old pervert klaus schwab is saying it turd eau won't listen
This is not very clear of what or how this is going to be put together? Hydrogen system, ,with a combustion system, and with an ammonia system, a long with an electric system, in one vehicle? Sound like this is going to be very expensive. How about we just use nuclear to generate synthetic gas or diesel, made from co2 pulled from the air or other systems and run that in the vehicles with have currently no new vehicles.
Ammonia is produced by making hydrogen from natural gas and combining it with nitrogen. From energy perspective driving an ammonia fueled car makes no sense. Might as well use the natural gas directly in the car.
all these make sense if ammonia is produced and finally stored ,by wind or solar power.
@@panos4386 Plenty of fuels can be made using renewables, methane included. That was never the issue.
Ammonia power people!!!
Very good stuff.
Ugh, doesn't locomotives run that way??
Trying to get clarity on this as well. Someone said yes and explained, but I don't fully get it yet. :)
I totally disagree with him, the caveat that needs to be remembered is electric and battery development is in its early stages as battery quality improves and recycling improves on those the range will increase it will be a lot more efficient than not using a chemical to burn whether it's ammonia or hydrogen now while these I'm going to mention are in the early stages the lithium sulfur battery has a potential . from what I've read in articles on RUclips lithium sulfur battery has a potential of 900 mi range now that doesn't mean they're going to use a 900 mi range. they might stop at 500 and just have a lighter battery a real issue is recycling the battery anything that is combustible or explosive is dangerous that includes lithium. so no this is not improvement this is not the best using ammonia. It's just another way to drag out the combustion engine the combustion engine is an old technology like steam engine or horse it had its time and now it's going to be replaced right now they're developing the infrastructure and they're improving to get a much better battery which will come.
This is a good point. Isn't it a good idea to make a better combustion engine while we wait for battery tech to mature as you've described though? I'm not sure there is a switch flip transition to electric, and even if there was, and we did it today, are we where we need to be in terms of efficiency and disposal? I don't know, just asking.
The problem is banking on recycling of lithium, batteries, and as the batteries get higher range, they are using chemistries that have more oomph/explosion risk.
I think ammonia fuel, self or electric drivetrain, would be pretty good, it’s only because it’s versatile enough to be a plug-in solution to our existing infrastructure and remove carbon from the system.
I will stick to my diesel
Why go to all that trouble, just build a GTL plant and make gasoline from captured CO2! Then use all the existing infrastructure….ammonia and hydrogen are both extremely dangerous chemicals!
This is the first I'm hearing about GTL. Are you aware of any experts in the space that we could invite to the show?
I like the Toyota hydrogen fuel cell car.
Solid state hydrogen the end
How?
@@anonymousAJ Lots out there on it, like
ruclips.net/video/U7CCq4oBgw4/видео.html
We are trying to book a guest to discuss this topic, keep an eye out.
@@anonymousAJ ruclips.net/video/VPdPOcHkrkc/видео.html
Way dont yuzit laser plags for amonia
Why is this guy trying to eat the camera? BACK UP!!!!!
Hahahaha. Taped the show over the lunch hour, was feeling a bit peckish! Thanks for watching.
I had shit in the background that I couldn't show on youtube so I zoomed in.
Super cheap abundant PV electricity coming soon makes your argument against BEV's wrong
Interesting point! Do you know of any PV experts or other people driving that side of the argument that we could invite on to counter these opinions?
they have been saying that for the last 20 yrs ....still waiting pv is only 20% in real life except for experimental and really expensive models and then the real problem ...where and how do you store the elec produced ?
Do I have a Bridge to sell you folks! Only 1 million dollars and I'll send you the Bill of sale.
What is it you disagree with exactly? We're trying to learn this stuff too.
Also, 1 million is a little rich for us, but how's $500? I'd love to add a bridge to our portfolio. :)
Nonsense. Electric engines, as well as hydrogen engines are not needed in an internal combustion engine. This is fluff to get this guys ammonia nonsense out there. 100% Ethanol produces zero emissions, and does not need gasoline during a cold start. That is the way to go for an ICE engine. Hydrogen can easily be used with a rotary, and has already been developed by Mazda which will fully maximize its efficiency with zero emissions. The guy in this video is talking thirty to forty years ago. With advanced tuning software, if we were to run hydrogen, or convert existing ICE engines to hydrogen, we would use hydride which is not readily available, so E100 is the way to go. You can literally make your own. Using ammonia as a source material for an ICE engine is a waste of time, as today’s technology has already grasped other ways way more efficiently. Again, E100 has ZERO emissions, and the only people who say otherwise are those with an investment in EV’s or big oil. Larger capacity fuel tank, and larger injectors, retune the VE table and ANY engine can be converted to 100% Ethanol. EOS.
where and how are you going to produce the ethanol without using fossil fuels ?...it has been proven that producing it from corn costs more fossil fuels than it saves in the cars also long term ethanol use damages an ICE
Thanks for your comments. Are there any experts in the field making your case that we could have on to discuss the counterpoint? Recommendations?
You're still stuck in the beautiful Neanderthal days hahaha we don't need to burn fossil fuels. We only need Superfluids. That last forever.
Hot or cold. That's all I'm going to say.
What are superfluids? I'm curious. Maybe we need to talk to someone about them on the show?