Is ammonia the fuel of the future?

[Xist]

I received a notification about Ford's new and fuel-efficient Maverick, but when I tapped on it I just got Google News. I scrolled and scrolled and haven't found anything yet, so I guess that I will need to do a search. I looked here and didn't see anything, but I often have problems with the search function.

Thanks Google!

This article for my attention, though: New Renewable Fuel May be 3 Times More Powerful than Gasoline.

The first part reads like a history lesson and then it sounds like an ad for a company called Amm Power, but maybe they are encouraging people to invest in a stock they feel well return dividends. It also seems to contradict itself. Natural gas has 91 times the energy density of lithium batteries, but they also say "ammonia has 9x the energy capacity of lithium-ion batteries." It sounds like the whole thing is about ammonia as a fuel, but then they write "it could also allow hydrogen cracking to be done closer to the end-user."

Are they trying to use ammonia as a fuel or just a vehicle for hydrogen--converting the ammonia close to where it is sold to the consumer?

What do you guys think?

[freebeard]

justacarguy.blogspot.com/2011/09/bruce-mccalls-zany-afternoons.html

[oil pan 4]

Meth heads are salivating over this.
Also all man made ammonia comes from natural gas.

Capacity and density are 2 different things. If looking as capacity my leaf holds like 2/3 gallon of gasoline worth of energy. If that leaf battery was a gas tank it would hold around 50 gallons.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

all man made ammonia comes from natural gas

So is most of the synthetic urea, such as what is used to make DEF. I don't remember how the reaction happens, but when the DEF is applied to the exhaust stream it turns into ammonia and then reacts with the NOx. Even though I don't hold my breath for any application of ammonia to vehicles to go mainstream, eventually it would make more sense to use in a way similar to those old fridges in order to replace a compressor-driven air conditioner.

[Autobahnschleicher]

As the ammonia is produced using fossile fuels as energy source, it doesn't realy make much sense.
It's more efficient to use fossile fuels directly as every step has losses.
(BEV beeing an exception as the conversion to electricity and back into mechanical energy is very efficient and ICEs suck at low load)

[Piotrsko]

I thought DEF was EU pig pee clarified and exported to US of A according to the labels.on said DEF.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Autobahnschleicher

As the ammonia is produced using fossile fuels as energy source, it doesn't realy make much sense.
It's more efficient to use fossile fuels directly as every step has losses.

That's one of the reasons why I am mostly unfavorable to the SCR system, not only due to the diminished efficiency of the urea production but also because it doesn't lead to an actual improvement of the combustion process. At least one trucking company in my country performed tests with an Euro-3 Mercedes-Benz Atego fitted with a Diesel-CNG dual-fuel setup, and it ran cleaner than its Euro-5 equivalent fitted with SCR and DPF.