Advertisement

Green Ammonia Could Power the Future—If We Can Get Over the Risks

Photo credit: Clouds Hill Imaging Ltd. - Getty Images
Photo credit: Clouds Hill Imaging Ltd. - Getty Images

From Popular Mechanics

  • The Royal Society is promoting green ammonia in a new wide-ranging policy brief.

  • Ammonia is used as a cleaning product, a dye and tanning agent, and industrial fertilizer. It's prevalent—but dangerous.

  • Removing carbon from ammonia production could reduce worldwide carbon emissions by nearly 2 percent.


Could cargo ships run on so-called green ammonia? Scientists think so, and they say a retrofit—like converting a car to run on recycled oil—could turn cargo ship engines into ammonia engines. This comes from a new report from the U.K.’s Royal Society, presented as a policy brief to encourage use of green ammonia.

There’s one huge elephant in the room with this idea: Ammonia is really dangerous when it’s handled carelessly—and sometimes even when it’s handled carefully. Its vapors are reactive and corrosive, causing ammonia poisoning that can burn and damage the respiratory system when inhaled. Swallowing liquid ammonia can cause similar burning and damage to the digestive system, and even exposed skin can be damaged.

Ammonia does occur naturally in the human body and other living things, but the dangerous exposure is almost always in industrial or workplace applications. Cleaning products may contain ammonia, and farmers may have to handle huge quantities of it that can be dangerous even in relatively open settings. Agricultural use accounts for 80 percent of annual ammonia production, the Royal Society says. Historically, ammonia (often from urine) was used to help fix dyes and treat materials. Some home hair dye products still use it.

So why would we turn to ammonia as anything resembling “green” technology? Well, the first step of this idea is that all ammonia we already use around the world as fertilizer should be transitioned from “carbonized” ammonia made with fossil fuels to decarbonized ammonia made without them. As it stands, ammonia generates nearly 2 percent of global carbon emissions by itself.

Once a production environment for green ammonia exists, the report’s authors say, we’ll have a plentiful source of cleaner energy with its own readymade supply chain. “With its relatively high energy density of around 3 kWh/litre and existing global transportation and storage infrastructure, ammonia could form the basis of a new, integrated worldwide renewable energy storage and distribution solution,” the scientists explain.

Ammonia has capacity to replace gasoline or diesel, they say, in combustion or as something that reacts powerfully with oxygen. Ammonia could also be used as a helper in other green energy setups by storing thermal or chemical energy. In fact, ammonia’s reactivity with air and its chemical makeup mean it could solve problems that are obstructing development of solar hydrogen.

But the old stigma of ammonia, which isn't just dangerous, but also part of an industry that has accelerated climate change with its massive emissions and chemical pollutants, could be hard to shake. That seems to be what this report is trying to do: acknowledge everything that ammonia has done or caused in the past that it might “be decoupled from environmental impact,” the scientists write.

If we can—if we even should—forgive and address these downsides, the Royal Society believes ammonia could substantially help humankind move away from fossil fuels and toward whatever the carbon-neutral and renewable future holds.

You Might Also Like