MIT Breakthrough in Getting Hydrogen out of Ammonia... err... what?

[Jimmy Higgins]

link

Scientists at MIT have discovered a new way to extract high-purity hydrogen from ammonia while using a lot less energy than previous technologies. The breakthrough could provide a critical inroad toward reducing the energy and ecological footprint of the hydrogen sector, which powers a wide range of industrial processes and technologies from fuel cells to computer chip manufacturing.

Green hydrogen has often been touted as a silver-bullet solution for decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors like the shipping industry and steelmaking, as the gas can be combusted at high heat like thermal coal, heavy fuel oil, or natural gas but leaves behind nothing but water vapor when burned. The problem is that most hydrogen is not green, it’s made using fossil fuels, negating its utility as a clean energy alternative. Plus, green hydrogen is often a costly and inefficient use of renewable energy resources that could be more appropriately used in other more direct applications.

This isn't about the hydrogen "solution" to energy. My question is about getting hydrogen out of Ammonia cheaper... because didn't we use a lot of energy to put it in there to begin with? Last time I checked, 2% of human energy use on the planet goes into Ammonia production... because we need it to feed lots of people. It isn't like we have piles of it just laying around, like rock salt before winter.

I suppose in theory we could store hydrogen in ammonia for transportation sake and then use processes to get it back out, but that all requires energy. And we were trying to figure out energy sustainability via physics, not accounting gimmicks.

 

[steve_bank]

"science Breakthroughs' reports appear in the news periodically. A lot of it misleading.

There are some very good science reporters and ones who do not understand what they write about.

 

[lpetrich]

Interesting research. But that is not very useful for renewable energy. What's useful for that is making hydrogen by electrolysis of water. This hydrogen can be used to make ammonia in the Haber-Bosch process, the first step in nitrogen fertilizers.