An FCEV for Our Environment
With the rising concerns over greenhouse gas emissions, the development of ammonia fuelled vehicles as environmentally friendly cars would have to look rather promising. A car running on NH3 – now what’s not to like about that?
Many scientists believe that it is urgent to reduce CO2 emissions because of the global warming effect that the gas has on the climate around the globe. Despite CO2 in the atmosphere being great for plant growth (some of the edges of the earth’s deserts are greening up again with increased CO2 in the atmosphere), and the earth’s water cycle playing a pivotal role in governing the earth’s temperature, the drive to create taxing emission standards and expensive alternatives continues to drive government policy worldwide. What if we gradually changed over to another source of energy so that everyone in the world could afford the switch, allowing people to maintain a higher standard of living?
Using CO2–free fuels to reduce the level of CO2 emissions could be a viable option in the current climate. So, what about ammonia?
An internal combustion engine (ICE) burns a fuel. Basically, you can convert an engine to run on any fuel such as fossil-fuels, hydrogen and ammonia, and there are many ways to do so. ICE engines are very good in combination with battery and hybrid systems. It would be a perfect solution to make a hydrogen-fuelled vehicle with hydrogen that has been cracked out of ammonia and stored in the vehicle. The ammonia would then be used to drive the electric propulsion system because an electric propulsion system is highly efficient. That would be a perfect vehicle.
The battery system in this model would not need to be anywhere near the size of a pure EV and anywhere near the weight. For instance, in a Tesla, the whole EV platform under the car is a battery pack that is massively heavy. A clean-burning ICE producing heat-waste from the combustion process could use this heat-waste to warm up the cabin’s interior on a cold day, cool the cabin down via a heat exchanger, and could also be used to cool and heat the battery accordingly for optimum battery operating temperatures.
You can store accessible hydrogen in the form of ammonia (NH3). Unlike hydrogen gas, which requires very low (cryogenic) temperatures to liquefy, ammonia becomes a liquid at –34°C. Ammonia also does so at room temperature and at 9 atmospheric pressures, making it much more convenient to use as a transportation fuel. Ammonia is comparatively inexpensive to produce, and the hydrogen can be separated out using catalysts without undue losses.
Essentially, you have a car with a combustion engine that is burning the hydrogen that is cracked out of the stored ammonia onboard the car to produce electricity. The engine would have an alternator as an electric motor that would power the drivetrain with electricity at close to 99% efficiency. This set-up is known as a Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV).
The FCEV above uses stored ammonia that’s cracked onboard the car to produce hydrogen to run the electric drive train – only emitting water vapour and warm air as exhaust, and is considered a zero-emission vehicle. Now that sounds pretty smart, efficient and green to me!
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