Another way to look at ammonia as a transport medium is to do an energy equation. Note that when we looked at generating hydrogen for a fuel cell - and ignored any transportation cost - the cost per mile for hydrogen was a bit less than three times the cost for electricity for a battery electric vehicle. And that was taking into account the cost of transporting the electricity
Now, let me do a "back of the envelope" calculation for converting the hydrogen to ammonia, transporting it, and then converting it back to hydrogen.
We start with 100 units of power in the form of electricity and use that for electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen. Our output is about 70 units of power in the form of hydrogen. Then we input that hydrogen to the Haber-Bosch process to produce ammonia. Let's say that costs us 10%, or 7 units of power, giving us 63 units. Then we ship the ammonia and let's say that takes 5%, or 3.15 units, giving us a bit less than 60 units. Then we convert the ammonia back to hydrogen and compress the hydrogen to about 10,000 pounds per square inch to put it into a vehicle. Let's say that takes 10%, or about 6 units or power, giving us about 54 units. Then we put that hydrogen into a fuel cell at 50% efficiency, which gives us 27 units of energy to feed to the motors.
Note that for a battery electric vehicle we started with that same 100 units of power, allocated 5% to transmission and 5% to losses in charging the battery, giving us about 90 units of power.
As a back of the envelope calculation, hydrogen will be a bit more than three times as expensive as power from electricity per mile.
Add to that, a fuel cell vehicle is more expensive than a battery electricity vehicle and you wonder how many could be sold - completely ignoring the question of where the buyer is going to purchase the hydrogen.
Mike
[And there are a lot of safety issues with hydrogen that would have to be overcome before you could have a mass market system.]
Last edited by Mike Henderson; 04-30-2021 at 10:26 PM.
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