Posted on 07/03/2023 1:08:39 PM PDT by nickcarraway
It’s not the first time that the toxic substance has been used in a combustion engine, but GAC says it has made it work as a fuel for regular ICE cars.
While the world is looking to get away from internal combustion engines (ICE) and towards battery electric vehicles (BEV) or fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) for cleaner emissions, China-state owned Guangzhou Automobile Group Co. (GAC) appears to want to do it all. During its annual technology showcase, the Chinese partner to Toyota showed off an engine powered by ammonia. While it's not the first ever to use the rather toxic fertilizer as a combustible fuel, it would be the first to use it outside the shipping and trucking industries.
It seems that's what GAC has been able to produce, an engine that has a high-enough cylinder pressure to prevent some of that excess nitrogen from being an issue. The 2.0 liter I-4, according to GAC's Qi Hongzhong via Bloomberg, produces around 161 hp with a 90 percent reduction in carbon emissions when compared to "conventional fuels." Does this mean we'll see more ammonia-powered ICE vehicles in the near future? Probably not and it's more than the nitrogen byproduct it creates.
There are two major hurdles for using ammonia as a fuel source. First, is the obvious one in that it's a toxic substance. Ammonia is a solvent and can dissolve alkali metals and enough exposure of ammonia in gas or liquid form can lead to death in both humans and animals (it's the leading cause of fish kills, according to the EPA). That's why it's been considered as a diesel fuel alternative for the transportation industry as that sector is already able to handle the distribution and transportation of toxic substances. It's also used in rocket engines, which is another industry that is used to dealing with toxic substances as fuels like hydrazine and UDMH (which is also known as "Devil's venom"). The most famous use of ammonia as a rocket propellant was the X-15 rocket-powered aircraft, which was flown to 4,520 mph (or Mach 6.7 at its 102,100 feet altitude) by William Knight.
It's Hard To Use
While you may associate ammonia with its high nitrogen-containing cousin, ammonium nitrate, ammonia is actually rather hard to use as a fuel in something like an ICE vehicle. The liquid form of ammonia is slow burning but has about a third of the energy density of diesel fuel at 37.95 kWh/gal (about 0.88 of a gasoline gallon equivalent). That slow burning property gives it an octane rating of 120 with a flash point of 270 degrees and an autoignition temperature of 1,203.8 degrees. Gasoline, by contrast, has an energy density of 33.7 kWh/gallon, a flashpoint of -9 degrees, and an autoignition temperature 1,135 to 1,550 degrees between 87 and 92 octane.
Then There's The Nitrogen Issue
When it does burn, it is a carbon-free emission and produces zero CO2, zero hydrocarbons, and zero soot. Don't celebrate yet, without an engine using a high compression ratio or boost, it does release a lot of nitrogen into the atmosphere which leads to ammonia and ozone being made in the atmosphere which can lead to acid rain and impair our ability to breathe. That's why we're rather doubtful that this is a meaningful development. As BloombergNEF's head of transport and automotive analysis, Colin McKerracher, stated, "Ammonia is hellish to handle, I can't see it taking off in passenger cars." With its toxicity issues, there just isn't an infrastructure that exists to even fuel these engines. Even though hydrogen has a tougher time when compared to the EV charging infrastructure network, it would potentially be far better to use ammonia in hydrogen production rather than use as a combustible fuel for ICE vehicles.
PING!....................
“it does release a lot of nitrogen into the atmosphere which leads to ammonia and ozone being made in the atmosphere which can lead to acid rain and impair our ability to breathe.”
Gee, I think I’ll stick to good old gasoline.
Amusing - ammonia was once used as a refrigerant, but was phased out because it was too toxic (only to be replaced by chlorofluorocarbons, which had problems of their own . . . )
Why bother? Unless you really like wasting money and energy.
There are many fuels under development, but don’t expect faux journalists, like the one who wrote this article, to praise any of them unless it is electric.
The command has been given by the Politburo that no alternative to battery electric should be considered no matter how compelling.
Yes. I’d think writers for Motor Trend would not be so ignorant and stupid.
I’m wrong.
And to think I hated the fart smell of catalytic converters!
Maybe you could make a case for ammonia powered stationary engines, in an industrial setting. But vehicles?
It’s highly corrosive and toxic. It has the same strong odor as household ammonia. So why was this engine built?
GAC pronounced Gak
Pretty well named.
Man, I coulda been rich if I could have trapped it all in those cloth diaper pails back in the day. 😂👍
Probably under a US grant at the behest of our climate overlords.
(I wish that was sarcasm, but it's not)
That nasty deadly poisonous Nitrogen...
Composition of Dry Air – The Data
The numbers below are averages.
Nitrogen 78.08% <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Oxygen 20.95%
Argon 0.93%
Carbon Dioxide 0.04%
Neon 0.018%
Helium 0.00052%
Methane 0.00018%
Krypton 0.00011%
Hydrogen 0.000055%
Nitrous Oxide 0.000032%
Carbon Monoxide 0.00002%
Xenon 0.0000087%
This a propaganda article to denounce everything but Electric Vehicles.
“without an engine using a high compression ratio or boost, it does release a lot of nitrogen into the atmosphere”
Which means with the right compression ratio and/or Turbo/compressor boost it will not put out too much Nitrogen.
Ammonia is so poisonous we use it for everyday household cleaning. It is less poisonous than gasoline.
Sometimes I wonder if China does stuff like this just to tweak the US and the west.
It’s almost as if they are trying to find ways to pollute more.
Mean while in China, untold tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of EV’s produced by many different companies are rotting away in fields.
Companies couldn’t sell them but they could pay a small fee and get them registered thus making the appearance of being sold. The companies could then go to the banks and pay a small fee and get more and more loans to produce more and more cars.
Production of internal combustion engine automobiles has already ceased altogether so they say
At least ammonia would remind you of a freshly scrubbed bathroom, not on you just graced with your flatulence.
you believe the chlorofluorocarbon lies.
It’s bad science, pushed on us because Dow’s patents expired.
This article is NOT correct, but covers SOME of the issues.
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/climate-change/a-monopoly-like-none-other-53610
If you look into the supposed science, if you even know high school chemistry, you can find the problem with the supposed Ozone depletion.
The real issue is....chlorine. And just how many millions of metric tons of that do we drop into water? And where does it go?
Don’t remember saying the chlorine radicals generated by the photochemical degradation of chlorofluorocarbons in the upper atmosphere did in fact lead to enough catalytic depletion of ozone to be of any consequence - I just said they had problems of their own.
Politics is problems - and chlorofluorocarbons are no longer used in refrigeration.
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