Featured Saudi Arabia Sends Blue Ammonia to Japan in World-First Shipment

Since 2010, California has handed out $809 million of taxpayer money to put 354,000 battery-electric, plug-in hybrid, and hydrogen fuel-cell cars on public roads. So the majority of tax payers money has gone to Tesla owners.

 

If the available hydrogen FCEVs had been more compelling to consumers, they would have gotten more. It also helps if the cars can be sold in the north part of the state.

Meanwhile, hydrogen stations are getting up to $115.7 million in tax payer support. Level 2 charging gets $24 million, and DC charging $49.5 million.

 

Seems like we are all paying for a better future. Millions of dollars are still millions of dollars, so let’s just say you gotta pay to play.

 

Why messing colors here?...

Green - renewable origin
Blue - CO2 emissions captured during production
Grey - fossile origin

Green and Blue Hydrogen

 

Return on investment.For those millions, we have a few thousand hydrogen cars and buses. Tesla alone is approaching 1 million sales, and those won't hurt with the loss of the federal tax credit. VW cut FCEV funding, and a BEV factory on par with Tesla's is going into production now.

For the money spent on hydrogen, we could have viable options for other renewable fuels; ammonia, methanol, methane, diesel, and even gasoline. Those could all be used with a fuel cell, and can reduce the carbon emissions of the ICE fleet.

How does a BlueTec Diesel capture CO2 while going down the road.

I was referring to the use of blue and green as general marketing terms used to imply the products are better for the environment. Green in the US because of trees, and blue in Europe for the sky. I'm pretty sure such uses started before a third party defined blue and green for certain subjects, and marketing use was probably why those colors were used for such definitions.

 

approaching - more like heading away from, as of last May - now they're working on their 2nd million.

Tesla Sales Surpass 1 Million Electric Cars Globally
And this, despite no longer getting the "cap" they achieved for the first two hundred thousand vehicles
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Well the tide is turning for all non Tesla options.
Volkswagen Sold Nearly Twice As Many ID.3s In Norway In September As Tesla Sold Model 3s

 

Good for them.
I don't see the same happening in the US with the ID 4, as it is a shorter range EV, and Superchargers are a big advantage here.

 

VW has been building chargers threw out the USA as part of their diesel gate settlement. So there will be plenty of chargers for ID3 and ID4.

 

I doubt any proponent of EV fueling stalls can find harm with VW paying for electric car infrastructure - to do penance for their prior fraud. Too bad that penance doesn't include refuel stations that have 10 or 12 stalls, so you don't end up going to a solo or dual refueling spot that is either ice'd or inoperative .... especially if/when SAE formatted Elelectric cars become more popular in the usa - as compared to teslas.

Joe Biden would say, "come on man"

2X as many sales, in a teeny Market, for September, does not a conquest make, which was the real point of the article. Even so, it was intriguing to read recently that Tesla is in the process of building a 'smaller' (than M3) car for the European market - as well as the Asian market. That makes one scratch their head, and ask "why"? After all the model 3 is doing so well. Since the VW is cheaper, & Europeans are often/notoriously more money conscious, now it makes sense.
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with close to 80% nitrogen in the atmosphere, we better hope it's safe to release

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..... and yet - the Japanese car manufacturers seem to be the primary drivers of the most expensive method to get there fuel cell cars on the roads. Just speculating, yet wondering why. If Japan were to use methanol or diesel Etc - to run infrastructure & their fuel cells, wouldn't that necessarily keep them beholden to the fossil fuel producing industry, which, due to their geography is nill in Japan?

 

Companies have been using the haber process for over 100 years, and it basically is responsible for helping feed the world by allowing inexpensive fertilizer to increase crop yields. Nitrogen from the air is combined under pressure with a catalyst to combine with hydrogen that was produced using fossil fuel. The "blue" process that the saudi's and others are using sequesters some or all of the carbon dioxide produced in the first step to produce the hydrogen or in some other ways offsets the carbon dioxide. As telmo says above there is a green process where the hydrogen is produced with renewable energy and water or another green process that could be implemented in the future. Since farmers have needed to transport this safely for a century there are inexpensive and safe ways to do it, mainly as a liquid in rail cars, tankers, and pipelines. Since it has similar high boiling point (-34C or -28F) to propane the same equipment can be be used for both. This makes it much cheaper to store and transport than liquid or high pressure hydrogen (boiling point -252C) or even methane (boiling point -161C). This is why the saudi/amonia experiment is more likely to be cost effective versus the australian blue hydrogen experiment using coal as a source and much more expensive transportation and storage.

Since Nitrogen is consumed from the air, the only problem is during combustion Nitrogen may form oxides instead of being returned to the air as the same N2. There are various catalytic methods to do this. I believe that Japan is planning to use up to 20% blue and green ammonia combined with coal to produce electricity. If 20% carbon neutral ammonia is substituted then they reduce emissions by 20%, not the 80% they are shooting for but a step in the right direction.

For transportation though the obvious choice is methanol or a similar liquid at room temperature instead of ammonia. Methanol can either be converted direction to electricity in a fuel cell, reformed to hydrogen on board and converted in a hydrogen fuel cell, or used in a flex fuel gasoline engine. Green Methanol can likely be produced at similar cost to Green ammonia when all costs are considered, and could be used in a flex fuel phev (easy modification of the rav4 prime) to provide a much more desirable vehicle than current 10,000 psi hydrogen fuel cells at a lower cost.

 

Not all chargers and locations are the same. Many of the ones being put in by VW are likely just 50kW at most; much slower than a Supercharger. Then third party charger network fees are more than Tesla's.

Tesla has been installing Superchargers where they are needed through central planning, and they still don't have 100% coverage for direct routes. CCS installation started later, and without major funding until VW got into it. There will be a gap between the two, and then Tesla's might have an adapter for CCS like they do for CHAdeMO by then.

But more plug in choices and chargers make it harder for hydrogen cars to get into the market.

Burn it, and you'll likely get NOx emissions. The temperatures used for reformation will likely result in the same. Not an insurmountable problem, but not as easy as installing a catalytic converter designed for gasoline.

A 3-way cat requires NOx, CO, and HC to be in a certain ratio in order to work. Lean burning cars produce less NOx, but their cats are no longer running efficiently, so they emit more. There isn't going to be CO and HC emissions with 100% ammonia for the cat to use.

. Seeing how many homes would take over 10 hours to charge a Prius Prime, with Level 2 not being an option, hydrogen cars might have been the best way to get to low and zero emissions for the country.

The original plan was to use nuclear power to electrolyze water for hydrogen, but that changed with public perception. Now they are getting their hydrogen from fossil fuels. Even this ammonia comes from some type of fossil fuel. In the future, the hydrogen could come from a non-fossil fuel source, but we can do the same for methanol and diesel. Audi had two pilot plants making methane and a light,sulfur free synthetic fuel oil with just water, CO2, and electricity. From those, you can make your methanol, diesel, and even ammonia, though it might be possible to make the ammonia directly, without a hydrocarbon intermediary.

The shipping industry is looking to carbon neutral methanol as one of its replacement fuels. I think there are already pilot plants making it.

 

Considering Japan is getting this Blue Ammonia from Saudi Arabia, if their plan is not to be beholden to the fossil fuel producing industry, it doesn't look like it is working too well (I've read that Japan claims they are helping Saudi Arabia move away from oil).

And I have my doubts about this 'CO2 emissions captured during production'. How much of the CO2 emissions were captured during the creation of this 'Blue Ammonia'? I found a Royal Society article that says the best we can do now is 60 – 85%, which I guess is better than nothing, but is definitely not carbon-free.

 

CO{2} is injected to force more oil out.

Bob Wilson

 

That's true of 95+% of the sequestered CO2 in the US. I would guess that could be true of Saudi Arabia, but then their oil already comes out easy.

In other countries, it truly is sequestered without getting more fossil fuel out, but it is a small amount relatively.