We are still under construction. Please scroll down manually to find the answersWhat is anhydrous ammonia or NH3?Why is anhydrous ammonia so important?What impact does anhydrous ammonia have on the worlds food supply?How can renewable NH3 help farmers in the U.S. and around the world?How does anhydrous ammonia (NH3) become plant food?How are nitrogen based fertilizers made?How is ammonia used as fertilizer?What’s UAN?What is urea?What is the Haber-Bosch process?What does natural gas or coal have to do with producing ammonia? How much Co2 is created making ammonia using natural gas? How much Co2 is created making ammonia from coal?How much Co2 is created making ammonia using wind or other renewable sources?What countries are major suppliers of NH3?How is anhydrous ammonia transported? What countries are major users of nitrogen-based fertilizer? How much natural gas does it take to produce ammonia?How does the cost of natural gas impact the cost of fertilizer?Has the production of NH3 been done any other way in the past?Can we produce ammonia any other way?What is a solid oxide fuel cell?How can wind be used to make
nitrogen fertilizer? How much electrical power does it require to produce a ton of ammonia? What would a ton of NH3 cost using these methods? How does wind produce power? What happens when the wind doesn’t blow?How can Freedom Fertilizer help the problem of producing power with intermittent wind? What are stranded resources?What can Freedom Fertilizer do with stranded resources? What is peak oil? Where is the energy in ammonia? How can ammonia be used in an engine? Can ammonia store wind power? How does the cost of ammonia compare to gasoline? How efficient is NH3 as fuel?How clean is NH3 as fuel?
What is anhydrous ammonia or NH3?Anhydrous ammonia or NH3 is a compound with the formula NH3 – one atom of nitrogen and three atoms of hydrogen. It is normally encountered as a gas with a characteristic pungent odor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NH3
Why is anhydrous ammonia so important?Anhydrous ammonia is critically important as commercial farming depends on NH3 fertilizer or anhydrous ammonia to produce the bountiful yields we have come to depend on.
What impact does anhydrous ammonia have on the worlds food supply?Crops in some areas around the world have suffered greatly because nitrogen fertilizer has not been readily available due to production and transportation costs. The worlds food supply will continue to be negatively impacted as the cost of fossil fuel increases and the availability of anhydrous ammonia decreases.
How can renewable NH3 help farmers in the U.S. and around the world?Crop yields around the world can be improved dramatically by having a locally produced source of nitrogen fertilizer like NH3, which can be produced by wind or any other renewable power source. An increase in yields will turn many farming areas in the world from subsistent to production agriculture. Farmers barely able to feed themselves using current methods of agriculture will be able to produce enough crops where they will not only be able to feed themselves well but will also be able to sell crops.
How does anhydrous ammonia (NH3) become plant food?The plant food portion of NH3 is the “N” or nitrogen. When ammonia or other ammonia based forms of nitrogen is applied to the soil it must be broken down into a usable form that plants can take up and use as food called nitrates. This is also called nitrification and is part of the nitrogen cycle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_cycle
How are nitrogen based fertilizers made?Most nitrogen fertilizer comes from NH3 that is synthesized using the Haber-Bosch process, which produces ammonia.
How is ammonia used as fertilizer?Ammonia is applied directly to the soil or used to produce other compounds, notably ammonium nitrate and urea, both dry, concentrated products that may be used as fertilizer materials or mixed with water to form a concentrated liquid nitrogen fertilizer.
What’s UAN?UAN is a liquid form of nitrogen fertilizer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAN What is urea?Urea is a nitrogen-containing chemical product that is produced on a scale of some 100,000,000 tons per year worldwide. For use in industry, urea is produced from synthetic ammonia and carbon dioxide. Urea can be produced as prills, granules, flakes, pellets, crystals, and solutions. More than 90% of the world production of urea is destined for use as a fertilizer. Urea has the highest nitrogen content of all solid nitrogenous fertilizers in common use (46.7%). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/urea What is the Haber-Bosch process?The Haber-Bosch process, also called the Haber process, is the nitrogen fixation reaction of nitrogen and hydrogen, over an iron substrate, to produce ammonia. This process has been used for the last 100 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_Bosch_process
What does natural gas or coal have to do with producing ammonia? Natural gas (CH4) contains hydrogen as does coal. When you release hydrogen from coal or natural gas it can be combined in the Haber-Bosch process to create ammonia (NH3).
How much Co2 is created making ammonia using natural gas? For every ton of NH3 produced from natural gas 1.8 tons of Co2 is created.
How much Co2 is created making ammonia from coal?A lot. For every ton of NH3 produced from coal, over three tons of Co2 is created plus other pollutants.
How much Co2 is created making ammonia using wind or other renewable sources?None. We would be 100% green if we used wind, solar, geothermal or wave.
What countries are major suppliers of NH3?Until the early 1990’s most of the NH3 used in the U.S. was produced from domestic supplies of natural gas. But as supplies of gas tightened suppliers turned to foreign sources. Today most of our NH3 comes from places like Trinidad, Russia and the Middle East.
How is anhydrous ammonia transported? The majority of anhydrous ammonia in the U.S. is currently transported by a 3,100 mile pipeline network starting at the Gulf of Mexico and ending in the upper Midwest. The State of Iowa has more NH3 pipeline miles, storage and handling facilities than anywhere else in the world. About half of the state’s total ammonia use now comes from offshore, and much of that from natural gas on the Caribbean island of Trinidad.
What countries are major users of nitrogen-based fertilizer?
How much natural gas does it take to produce ammonia? The production of ammonia currently consumes about 5% of global natural gas consumption, which is slightly less than 2% of world energy production. Natural gas is overwhelmingly used for the production of ammonia, but other energy sources, together with a hydrogen source, can be used for the production of nitrogen compounds suitable for fertilizers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer.
How does the cost of natural gas impact the cost of fertilizer?The cost of natural gas makes up about 90% of the cost of producing ammonia. The cost of fertilizer is significant impacted as natural gas prices increase along with demand for fertilizer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer.
Has the production of NH3 been done any other way in the past?The first Haber bosch reaction was done using electricity to disassociate the hydrogen for the reaction from water at the turn of the 20th century. Over time there have been several large NH3 production facilities around the world using electricity such as Norsk Hydro Rjukan in Norway, which operated from 1911 to 1991. The plant manufactured chemicals related to the production of fertilizer, including ammonia, potassium nitrate, heavy water and hydrogen. The location was chosen for its vicinity to hydroelectric power plants built in the Måna river. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norsk_Hydro_Rjukan
Can we produce ammonia any other way?Ammonia has been produced in a solid state environment. This process is called Solid State Ammonia Synthesis (SSAS). SSAS can be used for high-efficiency synthesis of ammonia from water, air and electricity. If the electricity used in this approach is also renewable, the ammonia produced represents an entirely green energy fuel-energy cycle. The SSAS approach is more efficient and less capital costly than past approaches using water electrolysis.
What is a solid oxide fuel cell?A solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is an electrochemical conversion device that produces electricity directly from oxidizing a fuel such as NH3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_oxide_fuel_cell
How can wind be used to make nitrogen fertilizer? By using wind power to create electricity we can power a Solid State Ammonia Synthesis (SSAS) reactor or produce hydrogen from water using electrolysis to be used in the Haber-Bosch reaction, which will create ammonia or NH3.
How much electrical power does it require to produce a ton of ammonia? Using the Haber-Bosch method approximately 12,000 plus kw per ton; using the newly developed SSAS process approximately 8000 kw per ton.
What would a ton of NH3 cost using these methods? Depends on your costs of power. $.05 cent a kw wind power would make for $700 a ton NH3 using the Haber-Bosch process or maybe as low as $500 using SSAS. We will know better as SSAS technology is developed.
How does wind produce power ?Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form, such as electricity, using wind turbines. Power is a measure of the energy available in the wind. It is a function of the cube (third power) of the wind speed. If the wind speed is doubled, power in the wind increases by a factor of eight or 23. This relationship means that small differences in wind speed lead to large differences in power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
What happens when the wind doesn’t blow?Electricity generated from wind power can be highly variable at several different timescales: hourly, daily and seasonally. Because instantaneous electrical generation and consumption must remain in balance to maintain grid stability, this variability can present substantial challenges to incorporating large amounts of wind power into a grid system. Intermittency and stranded wind energy production can raise costs and require energy demand management, load shedding or storage solutions.
How can Freedom Fertilizer help the problem of producing power with intermittent wind? Freedom Fertilizer can help to mitigate wind intermittency problems by using ammonia production as a load shedder and storage solution. Freedom Fertilizer’s production techniques will be used to produce NH3 when there are times of excess wind and low power demand. Then in periods of high demand this same NH3 could be utilized as fuel in a “peaker” electrical generation facility.
What are stranded resources?A stranded resource is any natural resource that is located in an area where it can not be effectively used or transported due to a number of reasons including lack of local demand, transportation costs and lack of transportation infrastructure. In Iowa we have stranded wind due to lack of transportation infrastructure and large power lines.
What can Freedom Fertilizer do with stranded resources? Many things. In Iowa for example, we will use stranded wind resources to generate ammonia, which can be used locally as both a fertilizer and a fuel. Another example is in the southwest where solar power could be used to create NH3 and then stored for use as fuel in a natural gas peaker-generation facility. What is peak oil? Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. Because the world's petroleum supply is effectively fixed, if global oil consumption is not mitigated before the decline phase begins, a world energy crisis may develop because the availability of conventional oil will drop causing prices to rise, perhaps dramatically. And as fossil fuel prices rise so do the costs of fertilizers both from transportation costs and from the increased costs of inputs like natural gas that are used to make NH3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_Oil
Where is the energy in ammonia? Ammonia has a formula of NH3, one nitrogen atom and three hydrogen atoms. There is energy stored in both the bond of nitrogen and hydrogen and in hydrogen itself just as it is in methane, which has a formula of CH4, better known as natural gas.
How can ammonia be used in an engine? There are four ways: 1) Ammonia can be burned in a spark ignited piston engine, behaving quite a bit like an ordinary gasoline engine, except it will perform at compressions of as high as 25 to 1, which is better than diesel's 17 to 1 limit. Ammonia does not burn without an extremely hot spark or a starter fuel, so hydrogen or propane is used as a starter fuel.
2) Ammonia can also be used in a diesel engine provided a small amount of diesel/biodiesel is mixed with it to get the combustion started. Ammonia will also burn in a turbine, which may be used in a “peaker” style generation facility.
3) Ammonia can be used in a fuel cell. This has always been possible, but development has favored hydrogen fuel cells rather than direct ammonia fuel cells. This will change as ammonia generation and distribution methods spread from agricultural areas to any place that has electricity sources that need to be firmed during peak demand periods.
4) Ammonia can also be used as jet fuel also. One of the most famous spy planes in history was the X-15 fueled by NH3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15
Can ammonia store wind power? Ammonia has the potential of being the tool that can make intermittent energy sources such as wind more reliable by “storing” wind energy in the form of NH3. Then when power is needed it is possible to release the stored energy by “burning” the NH3 in a “peaker” generation facility. The electrical generator could be powered by a diesel, turbine or in the future, a fuel cell, to create electricity when it is needed and done without creating any Co2.
How does the cost of ammonia compare to gasoline? At $400 a ton NH3 has a gallon of gas equivalent (GGE) of about $2.60 a gallon. If ammonia costs $500 per ton the energy contained in this ton would have a GGE of $3.25.
How efficient is NH3 as fuel?Research shows that NH3 fueled engines are very efficient.
An internal combustion engine fueled by NH3 can convert the total energy
content of the NH3 fuel to mechanical energy at an amazing rate of over 40% compared to diesel engines
that run around 28% efficiency and gasoline engines at less than 25%
efficiency. How clean is NH3 as fuel?Very clean. NH3 contains no carbon and if it is produced
renewably using Freedom Fertilizer methods, the ammonia would be a 100% Co2 free fuel. Although
research has shown that uncontrolled combustion of NH3 can produce some N0x
emissions this can be easily corrected by controlling the oxygen rate at
combustion and/or by a catalytic convert similar to what is used on all
automobiles today. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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