Tugboat Powered By Ammonia Sails For the First Time 111
A startup called Amogy has successfully converted a 67-year-old diesel tugboat to run on clean ammonia, marking a significant milestone in the transition to zero-emissions propulsion in the maritime industry. The Associated Press reports: Amogy's system uses ammonia to make hydrogen for a fuel cell, making the tug an electric-powered ship. The International Maritime Organization set a target for international shipping to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by, or close to, 2050. Shipping needs to cut emissions rapidly and there are no solutions widely available today to fully decarbonize deep-sea shipping, according to the Global Maritime Forum, a nonprofit that works closely with the industry. There is a lot of interest in ammonia as an alternative fuel because the molecule doesn't contain carbon, said Jesse Fahnestock, who leads the forum's decarbonization work. Ammonia is widely used for fertilizer, so there is already infrastructure in place for handling and transporting it. Ton for ton, it can hold more energy than hydrogen, and it can be stored and distributed more easily.
The tugboat ran on green ammonia produced by renewable electricity. A 2,000-gallon tank fits in the old fuel tank space, for a 10-to 12-hour day at sea. It splits liquid ammonia into its constituents, hydrogen and nitrogen, then funnels the hydrogen into a fuel cell that generates electricity for the vessel without carbon emissions. The process does not burn ammonia like a combustion engine would, so it primarily produces nitrogen in its elemental form and water as emissions. The company says there are trace amounts of nitrogen oxides that it's working to completely eliminate.
Amogy first used ammonia to power a drone in 2021, then a tractor in 2022, a semi-truck in 2023, and now the tugboat to prove the technology. Woo said their system is designed to be used on vessels as small as the tugboat and as large as container ships, and could also make electricity on shore to replace diesel generators for data centers, mining and construction, or other heavy industries. The company has raised about $220 million. Amazon, an enterprise with immense needs for shipping, is among the investors. Nick Ellis, principal of Amazon's $2 billion Climate Pledge Fund, said the company is excited and impressed by what Amogy is doing. By investing, Amazon can show ship owners and builders it wants its goods delivered with zero emissions, he added.
The tugboat ran on green ammonia produced by renewable electricity. A 2,000-gallon tank fits in the old fuel tank space, for a 10-to 12-hour day at sea. It splits liquid ammonia into its constituents, hydrogen and nitrogen, then funnels the hydrogen into a fuel cell that generates electricity for the vessel without carbon emissions. The process does not burn ammonia like a combustion engine would, so it primarily produces nitrogen in its elemental form and water as emissions. The company says there are trace amounts of nitrogen oxides that it's working to completely eliminate.
Amogy first used ammonia to power a drone in 2021, then a tractor in 2022, a semi-truck in 2023, and now the tugboat to prove the technology. Woo said their system is designed to be used on vessels as small as the tugboat and as large as container ships, and could also make electricity on shore to replace diesel generators for data centers, mining and construction, or other heavy industries. The company has raised about $220 million. Amazon, an enterprise with immense needs for shipping, is among the investors. Nick Ellis, principal of Amazon's $2 billion Climate Pledge Fund, said the company is excited and impressed by what Amogy is doing. By investing, Amazon can show ship owners and builders it wants its goods delivered with zero emissions, he added.
Zero emissions? (Score:5, Funny)
I believe anyone using the term “zero emissions” when describing this technology, has never even smelled smelled a fart before. Let alone ammonia.
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The article posted 12 hours ago - https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/23/1927231/earth-may-have-breached-seven-of-nine-planetary-boundaries-health-check-shows [slashdot.org] stated
Is this an attempt to mitigate this acidification?
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I believe anyone using the term “zero emissions” when describing this technology, has never even smelled smelled a fart before. Let alone ammonia.
Except this isn't a direct burning engine. It is burning hydrogen. Have you smelled hydrogen before?
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There are many that come to /. specifically to inject disinformation and troll. I suspect they're paid.
And there are those that have already accepted disinformation as fact, and come to /. to defend their adopted disinformation views.
But this is what makes /. a forum, and a place to inject thought, battle disinformation, shrug, laugh, at the cost of occasional whiffs of sulfur and other bad scents. A bit of anonymity here goads people into saying really silly stuff.
Re: Zero emissions? (Score:2)
I suspect they're paid.
Are they still hiring?
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Let me check your IP address.
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There are many that come to /. specifically to inject disinformation and troll. I suspect they're paid.
Don't confuse paid shilling with ignorance. This is Slashdot. We're not a major news outlet. Most of the world couldn't give a flying fuck what a bunch of us geeks think or discuss.
Re: Zero emissions? (Score:2)
I donâ(TM)t think a sailing tug will be up to the job.
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No I have no clue. I only work on major projects currently focused on hydrogen transportation and ammonia cracking. Completely ignorant here.
But let me clarify why my comment is important: There are two sources of smells here: leaks, and incomplete combustion processes. Leaks ... well no one gives a fuck what ammonia smells like, since if it is leaking in the engine room you have a big problem, namely the person who walked in there won't ever come out again until someone goes and removes their corpse, so th
Re: Zero emissions? (Score:3)
Itâ(TM)s much worse than the smell. Ammonia production emits more CO2 than pretty much any other process weâ(TM)ve devised.
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My cat produces plenty. Where can I donate?
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Itâ(TM)s much worse than the smell. Ammonia production emits more CO2 than pretty much any other process weâ(TM)ve devised.
Yes - e.g. for fertilizer. This article claims that they are using clean ammonia produced with renewable energy, which would be completely possible given water, atmospheric nitrogen and large amounts of cheap electricity like you get next to a properly designed wind farm. Do we know if there's anything like a commercially viable process for doing that due in the next decade or so?
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Depends what you mean by "commercially viable." By far the dominant ammonia production method uses atmospheric nitrogen and hydrogen obtained from natural gas. It's easy enough to swap in H2 obtained from electrolysis. That currently costs about 2 - 3x.
So for "commercially viable" you need to wait for (1) carbon taxes or scarcity to make H2 from natural gas more expensive, (2) electrolysis to get more efficient, or (3) renewable electricity prices to come down. There has been some good progress with 2. For
but the windows! (Score:2)
in spite of any drawbacks, the windows will surely be squeaky clean!
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"It's funny because it's poisonous" /zoidberg
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A stupid idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Ammonia is seriously nasty stuff which means the whole system should be sealed tight. Looking at the pictures - it isn't, so good luck any crew on the boat particularly the engineers who'd have to work on the engine at sea. Also unlike diesel and fuel oil ammonia mixes with water and is instant death to any wildlife that comes across it so if this boat ever sank it would be an enviromental disaster far worse than a normal vessel.
Apart from that, yeah, brilliant idea.
Re: A stupid idea (Score:2)
I can see the challenges of this system at sea, but wonder if itâ(TM)s a candidate, in a more stable environment, for âoebatteryâ technology to store wind and solar energy for peak or nightime use.
Re:A stupid idea (Score:5, Informative)
Not an accurate picture.
"Among the key findings of the report was that ammonia spills are likely to disperse less widely and persist for shorter amounts of time in the environment when compared to spills of conventional oil marine fuels."
...
"Ammonia spills are expected to have a greater impact on fish than oil spills, but a lesser impact on invertebrates and birds."
source [seatrade-maritime.com]
I'm not reading anything there that leads me to believe an ammonia spill would be worse than a conventional marine fuel spill, if anything slightly the opposite. Clouds of ammonia vapor in the event of a spill or accidental release would definitely be an issue for crew however, so yes, crews would need specific training and equipment to deal with that. However ammonia is already widely used and transported, so it's not as if we don't know how to do that safely.
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You tend to find fish at the bottom of the sea, not birds. As for dispersion that entirely depends on the size of the leak and where it sank. Small leak 2000m down fine, large leak in the middle of a coral reaf and you're looking at a nightmare scenario.
Re: A stupid idea (Score:2)
Do large ships sail through coral reefs?
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Doesn't look large to me. Plus its a proof of concept so if it became popular many vessels could use it.
Re: A stupid idea (Score:2)
They mention it can be scaled up to container ships, which will be necessary if it's to have any impact.
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Not only that, but ammonia spills would result in DE-acidification.
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It appears to be a question of portability. Batteries are still relatively heavy for the power they can store.
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Re:A stupid idea (Score:4, Informative)
It seems daft to use electricity that could have gone straight into a battery is used to create another power source - very inefficient use of electricity
Ammmonia has an energy density of ~20 MJ/Kg with a fuel cell efficiency of 60%, so you're storing ~12MJ/Kg og useful energy.
Li-ion is around 0.7 with a high efficiency, over 95%.
You can store a lot more energy in ammonia on the boat than in batteries. And this is a tugboat, so presumably hauling around loads much larger than itself, so it's somewhat energy intensive.
So... it depends. If you need a lot of energy stored and space is limited to the point where batteries aren't dense enough, then it may make sense spending a bunch of energy on compacting it.
For most applications it's just not worth it. For a few it probably is.
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It seems daft to use electricity that could have gone straight into a battery is used to create another power source - very inefficient use of electricity
Wind turbines and solar panels are extremely cheap and are able to switch on and off instantly so it's actually cheaper to create stable electricity by just installing more of them than is needed for power generation in a given location and turning them off when you don't need the full power. This means that, if you have a power drain that can run intermittently in a cost effective manner for it's capital investment, you can get very very cheap electricity for it. Nuclear plants have the opposite problem -
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Looking at the pictures - it isn't
Show me exactly what part of the picture isn't sealed tight. Do you have a problem with the fact that there is a door to the engine room? From the pictures I see there are welded piping with few fittings in place. Flanges have not only bolt tightness markings but also inspection tags. Hand valves have leakage inspection tags for their packing.
I mean ammonia is a stupid idea in general, but your complaints specifically (except for the environmental disaster) just show you've got no idea how pressure containi
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Far too many pipes with far to many bolted sections. All joins leak eventually, its just a question of when , and given ammonia is highly corrosive it will probably be sooner rather than later.
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False. All joints don't leak eventually. Leaks are the result of a lack of periodic inspection and maintenance. It does not follow that because a joint exists it will leak. And ammonia storage facilities exist the world over, as does mass transport of it, cracking processes, generating processes, all which do not leak. Bonus points for being a small area and thus easily covered by gas detection systems.
and given ammonia is highly corrosive it will
Corrosive to what? Just because something burns your throat does not mean it corrodes metal. It is not con
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It's seriously nasty stuff that we routinely move in massive volumes across the sea.
Re:A stupid idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Not the safest substance, but (Score:2)
Isn't anhydrous ammonia used directly as a fertilizer? Not the safest substance, but there is experience in handling it?
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Re:A stupid idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Ammonia is seriously nasty stuff
So is gasoline. And yet, entire nations drive around in basically Molotov cocktails on wheels.
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You know farmers spray ammonia on their fields, right? Big clouds of the stuff. The reason they do that is ammonia is produced by nitrogen fixing bacteria and plants, and used by other plants to grow. That's also true in the ocean, so a leak might kill things nearby but would end up fertilizing the area. Unlike diesel.
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Ammonia would form a base making hydronium ions correct? Dispersed in the ocean that would dilute pretty fast
Probably smarter than 'hydrogen', but... (Score:2)
Ammonia is VERY energy intensive to make, even with catalysts. Hard to imagine this being efficient in the slightest.
And I thought the point of fuel cells was they didn't combust anything, so no worries about typical bad combustion results. Seems this one makes stuff like that too though (nitrogen oxides).
Not a great article... (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea isn't dumb. Hydrogen is very hard to contain, but ammonia is a liquid, and correspondingly easier to work with. However, this is one of those pseudo-scientific articles, written by a journalist who doesn't even understand enough to ask questions. Just as an example:
Ton for ton, it can hold more energy than hydrogen, and it can be stored and distributed more easily.
Given that ammonia is NH3, and only the H3 is being used to generate electricity, ammonia certainly does not "ton-for-ton" contain more energy than hydrogen. It may take more energy to *make*, but you aren't getting that energy back out of it.
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Pure ammonia is a gas at room temperature. The ammonia in your kitchen is ammonium hydroxide, a mixture of ammonia and water.
From the photos in TFA, I think they're using pure ammonia. This is easier to contain than hydrogen, but it is toxic, so if a leak does occur you're in trouble. That boat crew better carry gas masks.
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It's still not "ton for ton" more energy dense than hydrogen. What they meant was litre-for-litre. Its gravimetric energy density is over an order of magnitude lower than hydrogen's.
Hydrogen is 141,86 GJ/tonne
Ammonia is 18,6 GJ/tonne
Liquid ammonia however has marginally higher volumetric density than liquid hydrogen, 11,5 MJ/L vs. 10MJ/L.
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Liquid hydrogen tankage, while certainly heavier than the tankage of other fuels, is still much lighter than the fuel it contains. See rockets.
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Hydrogen fuel tanks for rocket launches mostly keep the hydrogen liquid by keeping it cold, not by keeping it pressurised. Any heat that gets in through the insulation can be shed by boiling off the hydrogen, but that's not really an option for long term storage.
(In space, you can shade the tanks from the sun, and keep them thermally isolated from the rest of the spacecraft)
In less weight critical applications, you can increase the insulation or structural strength of the tanks, but rockets aren't a good ex
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I was talking about liquid hydrogen. See my initial post.
For anything "long range" or "large scale", you're talking liquid, not gaseous, hydrogen. The larger the scale, the easier it is to handle issues like insulation, reducing or even rechilling boiloff, etc. With small-scale, like hydrogen cars, you need simplicity, and thus gaseous hydrogen (at the cost of much worse tankage mass).
I'm not sure why you're talking about rockets with hydrogen in space. Hydrogen is rarely used as a stored fuel in space;
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You are certainly right about the relative gravimetric energy density of Ammonia vs hydrogen - Ammonia is about 6x as heavy for the same energy storage, but it is much more dense and has 2x the volumetric energy density.
Here's a great link with a comparison of the two, as well as a lot of other information regarding ammonia vs hydrogen for shipping:
https://medium.com/@jenscthoms... [medium.com].
It cites ammonia and hydrogen both having similar round trip efficiency, of about 11% to 19%.
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To be fair , it depends on the bond energy of the N-H links compared to H-H rather than the atoms in the molecule. I have no idea of the values however.
how do you make sails out of ammonia? (Score:3)
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A sail-powered tugboat would not be very practical.
Now, if you are thinking of sail powered cargos, they are making a (timid) comeback, yes. There are different types of projects. First, classical oil powered cargos with sails to reduce oil consumption. Like for example tests of big computer controlled kites to assist in a cargo propulsion.
Then, you have modern pure cargo sailboats doing small tonnage transport of high value goods. I hear of a new transatlantic shipping company that has already made transpo
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I hear of a new transatlantic shipping company that has already made transport of wines and other goods between the USA and France and is planning to expand. But in the grand scheme of things these are small expriment even if uplifting. :)
It would be interesting to see how large the carbon tax would have to be in order to make such transport cost-effective. I mean, I love the idea, especially because I'm a sailor, but it's obviously so far from being cost competitive...
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Could've gone with "fares", "launches", "ships", "departs"...
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Short term, probably LNG would be ideal. Can be produced naturally, or very efficiently synthetically. Escapes when released, and not nearly as toxic as ammonia. Volumetric energy density is lower than bunker fuel but gravimetric density is slightly higher, and that matters more. Could even run it efficiently on SOFCs instead of combustion. While there's direct methane fuel cells, the efficiency is much lower than for hydrogen; instead, you can get superb efficiency by doing methane pyrolysis followed by
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If shore power is cheaper than at-sea power, sure. But that's not going to give you enough charge for a transpacific voyage. Land power also competes with nature and other human uses, whereas there's no shortage of open ocean.
With today's tech, practical battery masses and costs correspond to 24-48 hours of ship travel at best. You can do much more, but at impractical capital costs and impractical reductions of your cargo.
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While your general idea is right, Ammonia, given the current way we generate it, is not the way to go, because artificial ammonia is so energy intensive. Basically, instead of burning the crude oil directly, you use it to make fertilizer and then run your ship on fertilizer.
Actually when you combine the energy required to generate ammonia (assuming green hydrogen generation) you are significantly more environmentally friendly compared to refining oil and burning bunker fuel. And that's the problem with comments like yours, they dwell on "the way we currently generate it". The concept of using ammonia as a hydrogen carrier for fuel goes hand in hand with the production of green ammonia via electrolysis. Its the same fallacy as the idea of hydrogen production being dirty so the
Its deadly (Score:5, Interesting)
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Most of what we do in the process industry is deadly. The number of bodies buried in the name of gasoline production should make you ashamed to drive a car, but because it's so widely used and accepted by society no one bats an eye. Ammonia on the other hand sounds new and unique (it's not) so people vilify it specifically. Ever heard of piper alpha? 167 dead. Think of that next time you pull in at a gasoline station to pour diesel into your boat.
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Not clean at all (Score:2)
Ammonia is NH3 so pulling out the hydrogen to run the engine releases nitrogen. That's not that bad, air already is 75% nitrogen.
The trouble is in the production of ammonia.
Nitrogen is extracted from the air again, and enriched with hydrogen.
That hydrogen is usually created from methane that is split into H and CO2.
Engines running on hydrogen made from methane are already similarly polluting than diesel and gasoline engines.
This just adds another step that adds more inefficiency.
Any alternative power source
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Currently hydrogen from electrolysis is on average 3 times as expensive and hydrogen from fossil fuels since it requires a lot of electricity.
Just a did in prices or demand doesn't cut it.
Like I said:
"hydrogen boils down to pure marketing BS until we have a tremendous excess of electricity"
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I know our modern world frowns upon long term planning, but it doesn't hurt to try. If you want the portable energy convenience of gasoline in a renewable form, ammonia may be the future. Lots of experience already in transporting it. The concerns about leaks are just solvable engineering problems. While currently not economically viable at large scale vs the established carbon based infrastructure, it is important
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This is a really bad assumption. Dock workers screw up and overflow diesel tanks, disconnect before turning off, etc resulting in the disgusting water that our harbors currently have. Do you really want these same people handling an ammonia fill-up?
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since it requires a lot of electricity
Electricity at what prices? If installed solar capacity goes up to a point that negative spot prices become common (i.e. a surplus of power) then easily throttleable uses for it can become economically feasible.
This is only a technology demonstrator. After all, they're using a 67 year-old tugboat. The cost to even keep something like that afloat eats up significant funds.
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pissing-into-the-wind department (Score:2)
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Producing ammonia to get hydrogen? (Score:1)
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Hindenberg vs glass cleaner. One of them is much safer to transport. Anhydrous ammonia is pretty explosive, but this is mixed with water as a carrier (liquid ammonia / ammonium hydroxide).
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Oh wait. This is liquid under pressure rather than because it's in solution. So that's not much better than hydrogen but much lower pressures. It will be really safe until it's old and not maintained. And then it will be a ticking bomb. Unless they plan it really well.
This will kill a lot of people (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yeah. But ammonia is a feedstock for many industrial processes. Trainloads of the stuff goes rolling through towns every day. I think they've worked many of the bugs out of handling it by now.
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We are talking a disaster like Bopaul India in 1984. Thousands die.
Looks more like it will kill 5 people. https://www.thechemicalenginee... [thechemicalengineer.com]
We ship ammonia the world over and have been doing so for close to 100 years. It's one of the reasons ammonia is proposed as a hydrogen carrier, we actively already move it by the literal boatload and there are comprehensive standards on the handling and storage of it.
The only difference here is that the result gets put in an ammonia cracker and then run into an engine.
if it can be done to a tugboat (Score:3)
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Cars trucks and trains have the same problem they do with actual hydrogen. The storage and transfer of it handled by general untrained consumers, and the integrity of the storage when the vehicle gets in an accident. You don't want this stuff driving around on the street.
Also you massively underestimate the size and space needed by a tugboat engine. You can do a lot when you have that much space. One of the largest limits of miniaturisation is the amount of ancillary equipment you're required to carry with
No carbon emissions but... (Score:1)
icyball a-go-go (Score:2)
Ammonia is so dangerous that Albert Freaking Einstein felt the need to invent a new kind of refrigerator to get the ammonia-cycle ones out of people's houses.
"And so, it is conclusively proven, via a epochal feat of mathematical imagination, that energy is equal to mass multiplied by the speed of--WHAT'S THAT SMELL?! EVERYBODY OUT, NOW!!!"
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Credibility? (Score:1)
Tugboats are deep-sea shipping? (Score:2)
Of course, this can still be a great technology demonstration. But for actual "deep sea" shipping economics, probably not so much.
I seem to recall another carbon-free technology developed for shipping [wikipedia.org] many decades ago. And despite it only being a tech demonstration, they pulled the plug on it just a few years before oil prices went up and its economics went positive.
Fuel leak (Score:2)
I hope the crew has protective gear in the event there is a fuel tank leak.
"Powered by" is not meaningful statenent (Score:2)
I can't find any statement about the ability of this Amonia-powered tugboat's ability to handle the workload of a similar diesel-powered tugboat.
I'm open to the possibility that this alternate power source provides an equal ability for this tugboat to do tugboaty things, but I can't find that statement.
All "Powered by" means is it can sail under its own power.
Now make it run on Venus (Score:2)
Doesn't Venus have an ammonia atmosphere? And high temperatures.
Nitrous Oxides as byproduct? (Score:2)
"The company says there are trace amounts of nitrogen oxides that it's working to completely eliminate."
S.S. Whippit?
Ammonia as ICE fuel (Score:2)
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Claiming legal Haitian immigrants are eating cats?
Claiming global warming is a hoax?
Claiming the American people wanted to ban abortions?
Claiming raising tariffs on all imported goods won't cause an inflation?
Claiming Americans want a free market in health care so insurance companies can go back to not insuring people with prior conditions?
Claiming Hydroxychloroquine will cure Covid?
Claiming shining fluorescent lights inside people will cure Covid?
Drawing Sharpie lines on a map will change the course of hur
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For lots of Democrats, disagreeing with them is Fascism. I don't understand it either. I think both comments are funny. Laughing at either big party is worthwhile. Just don't take them too seriously when it comes to real life.