Tugboat Powered By Ammonia Sails For the First Time
- Reference: 0175118997
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/24/0359225/tugboat-powered-by-ammonia-sails-for-the-first-time
- Source link:
> Amogy's system uses ammonia to make hydrogen for a fuel cell, making the tug an electric-powered ship. The International Maritime Organization set a target for international shipping to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by, or close to, 2050. Shipping needs to cut emissions rapidly and there are no solutions widely available today to fully decarbonize deep-sea shipping, according to the Global Maritime Forum, a nonprofit that works closely with the industry. There is a lot of interest in ammonia as an alternative fuel because the molecule doesn't contain carbon, said Jesse Fahnestock, who leads the forum's decarbonization work. Ammonia is widely used for fertilizer, so there is already infrastructure in place for handling and transporting it. Ton for ton, it can hold more energy than hydrogen, and it can be stored and distributed more easily.
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> The tugboat ran on green ammonia produced by renewable electricity. A 2,000-gallon tank fits in the old fuel tank space, for a 10-to 12-hour day at sea. It splits liquid ammonia into its constituents, hydrogen and nitrogen, then funnels the hydrogen into a fuel cell that generates electricity for the vessel without carbon emissions. The process does not burn ammonia like a combustion engine would, so it primarily produces nitrogen in its elemental form and water as emissions. The company says there are trace amounts of nitrogen oxides that it's working to completely eliminate.
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> Amogy first used ammonia to power a drone in 2021, then a tractor in 2022, a semi-truck in 2023, and now the tugboat to prove the technology. Woo said their system is designed to be used on vessels as small as the tugboat and as large as container ships, and could also make electricity on shore to replace diesel generators for data centers, mining and construction, or other heavy industries. The company has raised about $220 million. Amazon, an enterprise with immense needs for shipping, is among the investors. Nick Ellis, principal of Amazon's $2 billion Climate Pledge Fund, said the company is excited and impressed by what Amogy is doing. By investing, Amazon can show ship owners and builders it wants its goods delivered with zero emissions, he added.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/ammonia-fuel-diesel-amogy-shipping-60beccfb8894c79ddc624026fbf0a8e5
A stupid idea (Score:2)
Ammonia is seriously nasty stuff which means the whole system should be sealed tight. Looking at the pictures - it isn't, so good luck any crew on the boat particularly the engineers who'd have to work on the engine at sea. Also unlike diesel and fuel oil ammonia mixes with water and is instant death to any wildlife that comes across it so if this boat ever sank it would be an enviromental disaster far worse than a normal vessel.
Apart from that, yeah, brilliant idea.
Re: A stupid idea (Score:2)
I can see the challenges of this system at sea, but wonder if itâ(TM)s a candidate, in a more stable environment, for âoebatteryâ technology to store wind and solar energy for peak or nightime use.
Re: (Score:2)
Not an accurate picture.
"Among the key findings of the report was that ammonia spills are likely to disperse less widely and persist for shorter amounts of time in the environment when compared to spills of conventional oil marine fuels."
...
"Ammonia spills are expected to have a greater impact on fish than oil spills, but a lesser impact on invertebrates and birds."
[1]source [seatrade-maritime.com]
I'm not reading anything there that leads me to believe an ammonia spill would be worse than a conventional marine fuel spill, if anythin
[1] https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/alternative-fuels/how-would-an-ammonia-spill-affect-the-marine-environment-
Re: (Score:2)
You tend to find fish at the bottom of the sea, not birds. As for dispersion that entirely depends on the size of the leak and where it sank. Small leak 2000m down fine, large leak in the middle of a coral reaf and you're looking at a nightmare scenario.
Re: (Score:2)
It seems daft to use electricity that could have gone straight into a battery is used to create another power source - very inefficient use of electricity
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It appears to be a question of portability. Batteries are still relatively heavy for the power they can store.
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> Looking at the pictures - it isn't
Show me exactly what part of the picture isn't sealed tight. Do you have a problem with the fact that there is a door to the engine room? From the pictures I see there are welded piping with few fittings in place. Flanges have not only bolt tightness markings but also inspection tags. Hand valves have leakage inspection tags for their packing.
I mean ammonia is a stupid idea in general, but your complaints specifically (except for the environmental disaster) just show you've got no idea how pressure containi
Re: (Score:2)
Far too many pipes with far to many bolted sections. All joins leak eventually, its just a question of when , and given ammonia is highly corrosive it will probably be sooner rather than later.
Probably smarter than 'hydrogen', but... (Score:2)
Ammonia is VERY energy intensive to make, even with catalysts. Hard to imagine this being efficient in the slightest.
And I thought the point of fuel cells was they didn't combust anything, so no worries about typical bad combustion results. Seems this one makes stuff like that too though (nitrogen oxides).
Not a great article... (Score:2)
The idea isn't dumb. Hydrogen is very hard to contain, but ammonia is a liquid, and correspondingly easier to work with. However, this is one of those pseudo-scientific articles, written by a journalist who doesn't even understand enough to ask questions. Just as an example:
> Ton for ton, it can hold more energy than hydrogen, and it can be stored and distributed more easily.
Given that ammonia is NH3, and only the H3 is being used to generate electricity, ammonia certainly does not "ton-for-ton" contain more energy than hydrogen. It may take more energy to *make*, but you aren't getting that energy back out
Re: (Score:2)
Pure ammonia is a gas at room temperature. The ammonia in your kitchen is ammonium hydroxide, a mixture of ammonia and water.
From the photos in TFA, I think they're using pure ammonia. This is easier to contain than hydrogen, but it is toxic, so if a leak does occur you're in trouble. That boat crew better carry gas masks.
Re: (Score:2)
You are certainly right about the relative gravimetric energy density of Ammonia vs hydrogen - Ammonia is about 6x as heavy for the same energy storage, but it is much more dense and has 2x the volumetric energy density.
Here's a great link with a comparison of the two, as well as a lot of other information regarding ammonia vs hydrogen for shipping:
[1]https://medium.com/@jenscthoms... [medium.com].
It cites ammonia and hydrogen both having similar round trip efficiency, of about 11% to 19%.
[1] https://medium.com/@jenscthomsen/ammonia-as-an-energy-storage-medium-especially-in-shipping-196f73582d3b#:~:text=As%20the%20whole%20process%20has,easier%20to%20store%20an%20transport
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair , it depends on the bond energy of the N-H links compared to H-H rather than the atoms in the molecule. I have no idea of the values however.
how do you make sails out of ammonia? (Score:2)
Oh wait...
Heavy fuel oil (Score:2)
Ships typically burn heavy fuel oil. I horrible stuff in so many ways: [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Cleaner alternatives to burning this stuff in the sheer quantities that we're doing it now are very, very welcome.
Another way to reduce pollution/emissions is to use sails, e.g. [2]https://www.bbc.com/news/techn... [bbc.com] Apparently, these can reduce them by around 30%. Probably saves as much on fuel too. The bonus is that it makes tankers & cargo ships look like giant viking ships :)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_fuel_oil
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66543643
Its deadly (Score:3)
I survived this event: [1]https://abc13.com/ammonia-truc... [abc13.com] . Birds just fell out of the air, trees turned instantly black. 5 people killed, 178 injured. Our harbors are covered in the remnants of diesel spills, which are all too normal. We cannot afford to have one ammonia spill. This is not a good technology for use by a careless industry.
[1] https://abc13.com/ammonia-truck-disaster-houston/1332062/
Not clean at all (Score:2)
Ammonia is NH3 so pulling out the hydrogen to run the engine releases nitrogen. That's not that bad, air already is 75% nitrogen.
The trouble is in the production of ammonia.
Nitrogen is extracted from the air again, and enriched with hydrogen.
That hydrogen is usually created from methane that is split into H and CO2.
Engines running on hydrogen made from methane are already similarly polluting than diesel and gasoline engines.
This just adds another step that adds more inefficiency.
Any alternative power source
pissing-into-the-wind department (Score:2)
When I looked at the "department" listing for this story, I was expecting something like "pissing-into-the-wind department". That nobody mentioned this in the comments so far is very disappointing.
Zero emissions? (Score:4, Funny)
I believe anyone using the term “zero emissions” when describing this technology, has never even smelled smelled a fart before. Let alone ammonia.
Re: (Score:2)
The article posted 12 hours ago - [1]https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/23/1927231/earth-may-have-breached-seven-of-nine-planetary-boundaries-health-check-shows [slashdot.org] stated
> "Ocean acidification is approaching a critical threshold".
Is this an attempt to mitigate this acidification?
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/23/1927231/earth-may-have-breached-seven-of-nine-planetary-boundaries-health-check-shows
Re: (Score:3)
> I believe anyone using the term “zero emissions” when describing this technology, has never even smelled smelled a fart before. Let alone ammonia.
Except this isn't a direct burning engine. It is burning hydrogen. Have you smelled hydrogen before?
Re: (Score:1)
You have really no clue, do you?
this seems to be a tongue in cheek statement
if they have to produce, store and use ammonia then the its smell is inevitable around such installations
the efficiency of such schemes is ridiculous. Not only any device using hydrogen has a serious leakage problem which is of concern as the hydrogen is explosive in almost any concentration in the air, but also the ammonia is made of natural gas I actually should end here but let us assume that it is not a nonsense to jump this
Re: Zero emissions? (Score:3)
Itâ(TM)s much worse than the smell. Ammonia production emits more CO2 than pretty much any other process weâ(TM)ve devised.