Japan carbon pledge boosts hopes of ammonia backers

The plan to become carbon neutral is all over the place, wind, geothermal not getting much mention. Rather these expensive unproven Ideas that currently need massive injection of funds for dubious results. What a MOX up.

"Ammonia Backers" sounds like a great name for a rock band.

"Here's a new song by the Ammonia Backers..."

Fun facts:

Ammonia was the fuel of the X-15 rocket plane.

Ammonia is toxic to aquatic life.

Just another pollutant and poison. Go go green renewables. Sunshine wind water and land.

Right on Cricky...

"Ammonia is the cheapest and most viable option" for Japan, Shigeru Muraki, executive vice president and representative director of the Green Ammonia Consortium

Misinformation about baseload renewables has distorted the discussion about the least-cost future renewable energy mix. There are renewable baseload power sources with generation profiles that can economically replace other retiring electricity sources megawatt for megawatt, thereby avoiding incurring additional costs from purchasing and then balancing renewable intermittent power sources with storage or new transmission."

Hydroelectric power destroys habitats, sometimes whole fisheries. Big dams on rivers in California has killed off many salmon and steelhead runs. Where salmon was once so abundant it was called "poor mans steak: today it is scarce and commands high prices. Towns like Fort Bragg that once thrived on salmon fishing are now decrepit shadows due to lack of fish to catch. The dams change natural river flows, retain sediments that would otherwise replenish river banks and beaches and slower water below the dams is warmer, often too warm for other native fish species to survive in. Damming rivers leading to the Sacramento River Delta has reduced fresh water flow so much that salt water intrudes many miles upstream into regions of formerly fresh water, causing problems for farms that rely on fresh river water adjacent their fields. Where the Sacramento River once had four distinct salmon runs two are now extinct and the other two survive only though human intervention in the form of salmon hatcheries and significant flow management that is fought every step of the way by farm groups that want the water for irrigation. The days of building big hydropower dams in North America in particular are long past.

Geothermal power requires a hot spot in the earth's surface and water. The necessary hot spots are not globally distributed. They only occur in volcanic zones. We have an established geothermal field nearby that may have to to shut down as they have depleted the local aquifer. If the volcano(s) a geothermal plant are situated near erupts you can see your power generating station destroyed.

Go go green renewables

None of the several renewable energy sources currently known are available all day every day for a baseload, which is an absolute necessity to operate and electrical grid. Wind, solar and tidal power are all episodic. On a calm stinking hot humid night you won't have solar or wind power to run an air conditioner on, nor will you have power for your heater on a calm subfreezing winter night. For those occasions you need something else. There is no way around it. Hydropower has its own set of environmental drawbacks, some of which are severe. Batteries I would argue are as big a source of pollution and of hazardous waste as many current sources of thermal energy. It's nice to toss off glib slogans but what is a realistic means to generate power at night when there is no wind and between tides? Just suffer? Shut factories, businesses and public services? What is your realistic, doable solution? Please be specific. Hint, there won't be one silver bullet that solves the problem. Using ammonia as a fuel might be a partial solution.

Dessert Tortoise - 100% behind what you wrote. It takes an electrical engineer to fully understand the implications of having to have a solid baseload, and most of the greens aren*t one.

Gas turbines can run the base load.

Gas turbines are used as peakers, not for baseload. Their benefit for use as peakers is fast start up, lots and lots of power in a relatively compact space and they can sit for extended periods of time unused. Their drawback is high fuel burn and time between overhaul is shorter than for steam turbines.

Worked with ammonia, nasty stuff

Every big refrigerated warehouse or any big freezer in a business is uses ammonia as the refrigerant. It's ubiquitous.

By the way, for those who don't know a "gas turbine" is a technical name for a jet engine. When used to generate power the high pressure exhaust gases that normally propel an airplane are used to spin what's called a "free power turbine", basically a big fan right in the jet exhaust and that fan spins a big generator to make electrical power. You can also use the free power turbine to spin a big gearbox and propel a ship or spin the rotors of a helicopter. Jet engines turn up making power in lots of different settings.

There are two key disadvantages to using ammonia as a refrigerant: It is not compatible with copper, so it cannot be used in any system with copper pipes. Ammonia is poisonous in high concentrations. Not used in domestic fridges.

Industrial sized refrigeration plants use anhydrous ammonia almost exclusively. Ammonia based systems are less expensive to build because they use smaller diameter pipes, are more efficient, have better heat transfer qualities and ammonia costs much less than CFC or HCFC refrigerants.

Also it's smelling like urine too.

The post is about Japan and not what is happening in other countries. Off topic. Hydroelectric here is just about maxed out without any new locations available. Pumped hydro can be increased.

The deleterious aftereffects of building big hydroelectric dams are common around the world. The lessons learned elsewhere are fully applicable to Japan.