Comment by _aavaa_
2 days ago
Ammonia as a fuel is an absurdly stupid idea. It is trading the lives and safety of crews and passengers for a bit of money.
2 days ago
Ammonia as a fuel is an absurdly stupid idea. It is trading the lives and safety of crews and passengers for a bit of money.
Gasoline as a fuel is an absurdly stupid idea, dangerous to handle, toxic, and has a tendency to burst into flame!
I'm sure you can understand the difference of degree between something that is lethal in minutes and a gas (ammonia) and something that takes much higher and longer exposures to be deadly, plus is a liquid (gasoline).
Gasoline is not nearly as dangerous, toxic or as likely to burst into flame.
I'm surmising that it could be a useful first step towards converting the atmospheric CO2 into something easier to store long-term.
So the ammonia doesn't need to be useful in itself, but only to be able to be converted on-site to something more storable (more stable, liquefaction at lower pressure or higher temperature, and so on), or alternatively something more useful that could displace other standard CO2-intensive industrial processes.
> into something easier to store long-term.
Ammonia is NH3, there's no CO2 to store.
> alternatively something more useful that could displace other standard CO2-intensive industrial processes.
Except they are talking about using it as a fuel. If you want to displace CO2 at least use methanol, it's a liquid that's more energy dense and easier to handle safely.
Oops, you're right...
In this case the environmental significance of producing ammonia is much less impressive...
What is so dangerous about it compared to lets say a gasoline engine converted to use LPG or Methane? There are many of those in Europe where I live.
Ammonia is much more caustic, toxic, and explosive than LPG and incidents involving it like the Minot derailment tend to be significantly worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minot_train_derailment
You mean aside from being a colorless toxic gas that will kill you in as little as 5 minutes?
Yeah, ammonia leaks are much more nasty than methane or hydrogen leaks. Methane, especially in LNG form, is quite safe compared to ammonia. LPG is even more stable than LNG and requires lower pressures. With that said, hydrogen leaks are "fun" because large ones usually self ignite and burn with a hot but mostly invisible flame. But hydrogen itself isn't toxic. Similarly, methane and propane aren't directly toxic.
Basically, an ammonia leak will kill you. By itself. The others are only a problem if they're the right concentrations to ignite. That's a relatively high concentration and a larger leak. Much smaller leaks of ammonia are deadly.
It's still a good solution for some things, but it's a bad solution for consumer vehicles like cars for that reason.
Just like propane, nitrogen, laughing gas, and methane ... I don't follow?
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