x
As a follow-on from my previous article, I would like to elaborate on the potential for Ammonia to be the near-perfect fuel of the future.
Alex Koyfman writes in the https://www.wealthdaily.com/
For the last few months, I've been writing on an almost weekly basis about a green fuel that's already in the process of disrupting the multitrillion-dollar global fossil fuel market.
The fuel is ammonia, and its power has already been tapped for highly specialized applications like NASA's X-15 program of the 1960s, which produced the world's fastest-ever powered winged aircraft.
As well as emergency consumer solutions such as Belgium's public transit system of the 1940s, which called for a quick and efficient alternative to gas and diesel in the wake of World War II's fuel shortages.
The fuel produces no emissions, can be used in existing engine blocks, is extremely stable and resistant to auto-detonation, and can be safely stored for extended periods of time.
It is, in short, a near-perfect solution for the world's mounting energy crisis... With just one wrinkle.
Ammonia production has always been a costly, dirty proposition — costly and dirty enough to relegate it the status of a mere chemical solvent, even though a market 100 times as big was within reach.
Today, all of that is changing.
Thanks to a very recent technological innovation, ammonia fuel can now be produced cheaply, with zero carbon emission, using only air, water, and electricity.
With this piece of the puzzle now securely in place, an interesting opportunity has opened. Ammonia can now be used as a medium for storing electricity.
How would this work?
Just imagine you're an energy company that owns a field of wind turbines or solar panels. Oftentimes, during peak production hours (late morning to midafternoon), far more electricity is produced than can be immediately consumed — creating a surplus that needs to be stored.
Giant battery arrays are an option, but those come with a host of their own problems.
Lithium-ion battery arrays used for distributed energy storage are costly to produce and require regular maintenance. Plus, they're often unstable and they lose more of their energy storage capacity with every charge/discharge cycle.
Occasionally, they even explode.
With this new ammonia production method now an option, however, this excess power will be used to produce a zero-emission liquid fuel that can either be stored indefinitely with almost no cost, sold, or turned back into electricity when demand dictates.
Best of all, the carbon footprint for the entire cycle is effectively nonexistent.
As I said, we've been covering this story for months here at Wealth Daily, but now it appears to finally be penetrating the invisible barrier of public awareness.
Just yesterday, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries announced its participation in a project to develop guidelines for the safe usage of ammonia as a shipping fuel.
The project is led by the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping, a Copenhagen-based research institute created to promote decarbonization of the maritime shipping industry.
A week before that, Japanese shipbuilding giant Nippon Yūsen Kabushiki Kaisha, also known as NYK Line, announced that it too was looking specifically at ammonia in its efforts to help achieve a 50% reduction in overall maritime carbon emissions by the year 2050.
Written by Alex Koyfman
Posted April 8, 2021
Ask any 8-year-old what the fastest plane ever was and, from those who respond with anything more than a shrug, you'll get the same answer 9 times out of 10: the SR-71 Blackbird.
The legendary Cold War-era Air Force spy plane flew so high and so fast that no missile could ever catch it… and rival interceptors rarely got close enough for their pilots to even catch a glimpse.
Those few who did would have been rewarded with a firsthand look at this unforgettable shape:
At the age of 8, I got to see one sitting on the tarmac at Andrews Airforce Base and thought it was just about the greatest thing ever. And yes, had somebody asked me what the fastest plane ever was, I would have been bursting at the seams to be the first to say it.
And, like everyone else, I would have been wrong.
While the SR-71 did fly at an incredible speed of just under 2,200 mph (the speed of a rifle bullet as it leaves the muzzle) and still holds the coast-to-coast flight record of one hour and four minutes, it tops out at less than half the speed of the plane occupying the top spot.
Excluding the space shuttle, which is either a rocket or a glider depending on which stage of flight it's in, history's fastest powered airplane ever is North American Aviation's experimental X-15, operated by both the Air Force and NASA.
If you want to see one for yourself, you can. The one at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., still bears the scorch marks of its hypersonic dashes through the sky above the Nevada desert.
The X-15 differs from your traditional airplane in a few ways.
First of all, it didn't take off from a runway. Instead, to minimize the fuel requirements of having to start from zero altitudes and zero speed, the X-15 was dropped from the belly of a B-52 bomber (just like a cruise missile) and immediately ascended into the thin air of the stratosphere to execute its high-speed run.
The differences don't end there.
In place of air-breathing jet engines, the X-15 got its motivation from two liquid-fueled rocket motors, which produced 57,000 pounds of thrust.
Powered flight lasted less than two minutes, during which time the X-15 would add about 4,000 mph to its speed and between 70,000 and 300,000 feet to its altitude, bringing it to the very edge of space.
Finally, when it came time to land, the X-15 glided to the earth and deployed skis instead of landing gear to coast to a stop on whatever flat patch of desert was available.
All of these idiosyncrasies were there for a reason: to optimize performance.
It first flew in 1959, and in 1967, with William J. Knight at the controls, the X-15 hit Mach 6.7, or 4,520 mph, at an altitude of 102,000 feet to take the record for fastest flight in a powered, manned aircraft.
Had the beautiful SR-71 been flying alongside the stumpy, homely little X-15 on that day, it would have been overtaken at a speed differential of more than 2,300 mph.
During the high-altitude flights of the early '60s, the X-15 flew so high that five of the Air Force pilots who participated in testing were awarded astronaut wings.
Much about the machine is unique and amazing but perhaps nothing more so than the fuel that took it to those heights and speeds.
The X-15's principal fuel is a chemical you probably associate more closely with household cleaners: ammonia.
Despite its decidedly unglamorous reputation, ammonia is actually an incredibly versatile, potent, and environmentally friendly energy source.
