Comment by kulahan
2 days ago
Wrong. Natural gas is the most common catalyst, but plenty of plants use oil, coal, and other hydrocarbons.
A quick refresher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Process
2 days ago
Wrong. Natural gas is the most common catalyst, but plenty of plants use oil, coal, and other hydrocarbons.
A quick refresher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Process
Yes I know how the usual process works. The plant in the article is different, because it uses electrolysis to make hydrogen for the HB plant. You'd have known this if you'd read even the first paragraph of the article.
Right, and if you read the first paragraph, you’d see it’s meant to increase and decrease power consumption based on demand.
How are they gonna turn up the damn wind, WJW? Is this a plant that shuts down every time there’s a calm day? Is it a plant for funsies or meant to be a reliable station? Either this is a gigantic art project, or it has hydrocarbon inputs for running on days when the wind is calm.
My brother! This too is literally addressed in the article already!
"In order to somehow absorb the fluctuations in wind availability, you need to have a significant storage of hydrogen to be able to absorb these fluctuations, which is very costly. On the other hand, if you allow the plant to operate dynamically, you minimize the demand for storing hydrogen or storing power and hence, you can have a much tighter design, a much, much more economical design."
This plant is NOT meant to be operating 24/7. It does indeed reduce production when there's less wind, and has been designed to be efficient even at less than 100% capacity. If you look at the project page the University of Minnesota is pretty clear that the goal of the project is to make ammonia without needing any fossil fuel inputs, as Minnesota doesn't have any fossil fuel deposits but plenty of wind power potential.
You seem to be quite keen to keep making the false dichotomy that a project can be either "economically viable with fossil fuel inputs" or "just for fun", but that is obviously not true for research projects. In a world where renewables are becoming cheaper than coal it may not be true for production facilities either, and that is without the added risks of supply chain disruptions for fossil fuels. Not everyone is lucky enough to live in a region where natural gas is plentiful.