I agree.More Follow up videos would be great.

Very well said!

It's a good sign that they've patented it since that's a very good way of making certain that they have a legitimate process, not a vaporware idea. I just wish the Aussies would build that huge solar farm so they can start making ammonia for fertilizer to eliminate fossil fuels from the process. Thanks, Dave.

@@acmefixer1 Unfortunately our patent offices and people that issue them are not infallible and vaporware gets past her almost as much as other places. But livin in a state that's been pretty much all renewable powered my whole life that's spending up big on expanding our grid and knowing what hydrogen and such is already due to come online 👍 you do not need to do much wishing matey 😉 it's coming.

@@acmefixer1 Singapore - Australia power agreement, have you read about? Solar Farms and massive power cable.

ammonia can be directly injected into the soil as a nitrogen source for agriculture.

Yea, it feels like we have loads of little half solutions and are currently figuring where to put each one so it can be as useful as possible. Eventually we’ll end up with a grid that is incredibly varied based on region but all adds up to be 100% renewable. That’s my hope at least!

I like your vision :)

I have been looking out for something like this for our farm for using excess solar energy, please let me know if a micro ammonia or hydrogen generating plant is released on the market and I be happy to make good use of it

Yes, it does look like a game-changer. But - amazing how we've been content to use so many highly inefficient processes over the years - I would imagine the dirt cheap availability of fossil fuels is part of this (pun intended...)

Agreed. It’s also interesting when one encounters specific difficulties causing a slight pivot. So like you say, it becomes part of our daily lives, but we don’t know it.

Interesting comment - I liked it. Now - I would take issue with your characterizing some commentary as “ end of the world” hammering. I very rarely see that. I do see almost all commentary being like JHAThink; ie. we have a problem, it’s difficult, we need to work at solutions, and we need everybody on it. Almost all videos, documentaries, papers that I see start with the preamble: Energy is what brings us advancement and civilization. We need lots of it, and will need massive amounts MORE going forward. As with everything, there are downsides, or trade offs. It makes sense to think of better methods of energy production. And if you watch the likes of Tony Seba, and others, it makes a lot of money too, to solve these problems. Golden opportunities. Interesting - I’ve watched loads & loads of Renewable docs. Never once - not even once- have I ever heard anyone ever recommend going back to the Stone Age, let alone even back to the 60’s, or the previous century. They do however have a common thread : predicting an unleashing of the most incredible society ever in history. Due to vast amounts of abundant energy. Why - because it will be Renewable. When we shed the natural constraints of our heavy extractive energy processes, then make the extra investment in a renewable grid architecture - not easy, I’ll grant that for sure - but we are in for an absolute renaissance of abundance. Explosion of technologies, wealth, careers, new processes and products. I could highly recommend also visiting Rethink Energy - Tony Seba to get a feel for it. [ Sorry, I hope that’s not offside to come on JHAThink, and recommend another platform, but most here, have likely been there too. ] Could it be the exposure you are getting ? I know I have some family who feel as you do. But then I discover they listen to talk radio, and get input fed through Think Tanks that are funded by entrenched incumbents. They often feed a doom & gloom outlook : “If you move away from fossil fuels, you’re are going to Freeze, in the Dark.” Whereas, if we get this right, the absolute Cambrian explosion of demand for affordable goods & services BECAUSE of cheap renewable energy will usher in an entirely new age. I find it exciting. Not going to happen on its own of course - we will have to make some decisions. But the rewards for re-wiring our economy are going to be staggering. Some would describe it as an entirely new humanity - due to absolute abundance of energy. Typically, when you invest in renewable infrastructure, you have larger sunk costs, but when the fuel is free, the MARGINAL costs of energy, eg; electricity trend to zero. Thus - the explosion. But for now - we are stuck with the heavy industrial model ( which by the way, has been fantastic for ~150 years bringing us out of drudgery.) So we will still have to conserve, restrict, economize, reduce, ration, and meter our consumption. So - it’s interesting when you say “ I am actually a conservative.” I shouldn’t over-read anything there, but if I may, the tone would suggest that you’re implying that it sounds funny. As in, “ I know I’m not supposed to say this, and you may find it kinda weird, but ….” My family starts to squirm a bit when someone suggests conserving, fuel, land, resources, ecosystems, habitat, forests,etc. I have mentioned to my family on several occasions: “ It’s kinda weird that you’re a conservative, but you don’t like conserving.”

@@SquareRootOfMinus1 Long comment but covers a lot. Your last sentence is exactly my experience when dealing with friends who are politically conservatives and I have come to the same thought conclusion as in your quotes. Sadly I find that even my politically Liberal friends and family are very similar. There is a significant resistance to change and an even more significant resistance to opening the mind to options that could/will improve all our lives....the "change" and FUD that they will somehow be collateral damage in the transition is what will lead to our collective demise. Since i am here...I find it ironic that Russia is holding all the cards with regard to the Ukraine since any move on the part of NATO to sanction Russia will result in shutting off natural gas to much of Europe. Europe, and in particular Germany, have made themselves extremely vulnerable through their dependence on this green house gas. Will we ever learn!?

@@richardlangley90 Concerning your last sentence: If "we" refers to the electorate, then I dare to declare the answer is a sort of "no", because since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the change occurs faster then the main part of the electorate learns. And this is also getting worse because we're continuously allowing our populations to get older and older.

@@richardlangley90 Nat Gas from Russia to Europe. You make an excellent point. It’s almost as if Russia manipulated the price of gas lower over the years, until they had contracts with much of Europe all signed, and supply lines built, until they had a continent dependent on one particular substance. Hmmmm…. Now - once you become the sole supplier, you can do as you like. Crank up the price. Throttle supply. Geopolitical Leverage in war games. I have always felt it would be better if all peoples, or countries, or regions had access to their own energy supplies. Self-sovereign. Too bad we couldn’t find one - just one - source of energy that supplied all geographies, all peoples, free from manipulation, cartels, market disruptions, and artificial economic distortions. Oh yeah …. The Sun !

Great to hear you are a Conservative with a pragmatic realisation that we need to address the climate and ecological emergency. Even from a selfish point of view it makes sense. Now to get the high-ups (and this applies to Labour as much to the Conservatives) to actually act with the urgency required. Not words, not just numbers in budgets, actual action on the ground, in our hand, right now! I'm green, but I frown upon folks who think reverting to a pre-industrial lifestyle would be a good idea. We need high tech so we can have high tech medicine - but of course, you can't have high-tech medicine without a high-tech society. These folks who want to live free on the land - what happens when they get appendicitis...

I grew up in the shadow of the industry and have lived near refineries, and have a question; if "everything is captured and used, then why does everything for miles around a refinery have the "smell of money". The Oil Barons who started that phrase admitted that there was some, very perceptible leakage when they did that. There has been huge waste and land and property dissolution from oil and gas operations- in America as well as all over the world. You are from the refinery side, but let me ask a question from the drilling side; why are all wells REQUIRED to have a large diameter casing around the well bore for the first 2000'? I'll save you looking it up- it's because the drilling process risks contaminating the fresh, clean, often potable water that lies above that 2000 foot mark. The damage is so pernicious, this quarter million dollar "soda straw protector" is REQUIRED. Big Oil has from it's inception, chosen the fastest, cheapest methods to develop, produce and ship this stuff- and run it through plants that often leaked and belched tons of contaminants per hour, to peddle it onward through a system that had losses into the atmosphere at every step of the way. Follow one of the larger pipelines out of your refinery; it will likely go to a port to be loaded onto ships, it could be marine bunker oil (nasty stuff) to run the ship or some fraction of the crude to be shipped or even finished products like gasoline. All of those pipelines do things like travel underground, sometimes under rivers, few are double walled and most will at some time leak a little to a lot, maybe into a waterway that several communities get their drinking water from. But you are talking about just what you think you can see from the top of a cracking tower. Is there anyone in your community being paid just to watch the emissions outputs of your little "paradise in steel"? The refineries aren't clean, never have been, your industry has been driven by little but naked greed for 150 odd years- by the coal barons who became the first oil barons. Look into just who and what JD Rockefeller was- before he was "Mr. Standard Oil" he was "Mr. Standard Coal". Btw, at your refinery, have you ever processed some of the Athabasca Tar Sands oil from Canada or from the heavy oil from Venezuela? Very nasty and leaves a whole lot of "not good" that refineries already don't want to properly dispose of- it seems to get into their profit and loss statement. In closing, I would recommend you read Daniel Yergin's "The Prize"; it's about the history of the international oil bizz from just after the American Civil War to about 1980. It tells of some great successes and it tells of some disasters it caused that are still rolling through the world stage. FR

@@fredericrike5974 I'd like to take some time and answer you as best i can. Your long reply deserves it. I'm a work boot hard hat wearing lead shift operator, so with the large business decisions we're given no info due to strict insider trading laws. We're usually the last to know about anything. I can only say from my workplace, that "smell of money" is taken very seriously by management and by us. My little "paradise in steel" is monitored by several agencies. And they have TEETH. We operators can be held personally and financially responsible if we are negligent. I think there is, for sure, lots that don't take that seriously but should. And that's unfortunate. Fastest and cheapest is what every industry around the world strives to achieve. Not just the Oil and Gas industry. That's how business works. That can easily be fixed with legislation. You can blame the gov for that. And you're right, it was a very dirty industry as a whole. It's way way way better the it was before, even in my time. So is Lithium mining, shipping, aerospace, I Phone manufacturing, all of it to one extent or another. Do you like electricity? I do. We couldn't survive as a species without it. Next time you charge you phone, cook your dinner, or take a hot shower look in the mirror and thank ME, and those like ME for your very survival. If all the people like me who RUN THIS COUNTRY decided to quit the people bitching and complaining would be dead in a month. My units don't run the heavier stuff. But i can tell you the the "not good" ends up as road asphalt, roofing shingles, greases and important products like that. As i said, it all gets used one way or another. And yes actually, i would like to read that book. One can always learn something new!

@@jimmyjimjim3054 Just want to say something about "Do you like electricity? I do. We couldn't survive as a species without it." Our species has been using electricity for what, lets say, I'll be generous, 150 years. our species has been around in one form or another for approximately 2 million years. So, I think we could live without it! The richer ones of us and I'm not referring to the 1 percenters or even the 10 percenters, but we who have a lifestyle that requires it. Would find it a lot harder to get by. Food, water, heat and cooling. Just a thought. Cheers Jim

@@jimmyjimjim3054 The industry is still far from clean and owns half or more of the Texas Lege. Here in Texas, oil is regulated about as much as it allows. And I can still smell Pasadena , Texas from miles away. And FWIW, some 10-15% of that bbl of heavy crude isn't useful added to the the very difficult pile of "not good" asphalt is when it's removed from road surfaces and parking lots. My end of the industry was growing up in a moving house hold of a mid level to very high mid level managing engineer- different viewpoint, for sure. Btw, my thanks for "all the good things" your industry has done will require you to take up some of the blame for a bunch of those smelly bits your negligent regulators and cheap employers afflict hundreds of thousands of Americans with daily. As to "how hard and diligently" the oil industry works to be clean, I'll give it , in some quarters, but that is far from universal or a regular thing; the BP rig that spilled and burned in 2010 in the outflow of the Mississippi River did so because Halliburton ignored the Barriers Operation Safety Program that was developed after the Eko Fisk disaster in the North Sea- IGNORED IT! Macondo should have been shut down many days before that accident- but wasn't to save a few stock holders from paying the million dollar a day operating costs while they were shut down- there was broken positioning gear needful to kee the semi submersible located close enough over the sub sea completion to not bend or king the down pipe, hydraulics on the subsea completion were crashed into by an ROV Halliburton had hired to do a mandatory inspection- no attempt was made to try and cycle the shears or the closures. There is more- a lot more; the decisions weren't made by people at your pay grade, but much higher- and people at your pay grade were out on that rig in harms way when it all went up- several died. There are thousands of old, uncapped, abandoned wells all over places where America has prospected for aoil- and thought there are laws about it, if you sell the trash left enough times, it becomes impossible to reach out and slap the cheap bastards that do this crap. Jim, I have worked in the refineries, offshore, on service vessels and even been a teaching assistant for courses taught for companies wanting to improve employee education or outlook prior to being made foremen and higher. I've also had the privilege of meeting people from the Arabian Peninsula and other "oil country". Although OPEC exists to prevent the international oil companies from robbing the ME like they did till 1966, companies like Saudi Aramco are as racist and unapologetic about mistreating their employees as the Robber Barons were. In closing, JJJ, your industry had a very self centered and blind outlook about any harm it has done for over a hundred years- only realistic threat of shutting them down has got this far- and they still want to get leases when the companies are sitting on millions of acres of leases they have but haven't the capital or time to work but they want to buy new ones, they have to be sued when thousands of bbl of oil leak out into a swamp in Louisiana those self same companies PROMISED TO PROTECT. Keep your head down, and find a polite way to quit apologizing for people who would and will fire you if it looks beneficial to them- reason not important. FR

@@johnsamsungs5561 I’m sure the last few million of us that remain after global civilization as we know it collapses will live just fine. It would be relatively primitive and an incredibly difficult, brutal and nasty transition. The world as a whole whole likely to better without any humans depending on how u define better. Personally I prefer to keep electricity and work to reduce the impact on the planet as fast as possible.

I suggest you contact the team at Monash university. They may be better able to make use of your suggestion 👍

look at arena.gov.au/assets/2021/03/csiro-hydrogen-to-ammonia-july-2020.pdf Might be of use to you

I, like many others I am sure, appreciate your research and production. I do not (cannot) want to do the research. Thank you.

It would, but I still think too many people want one solution which solves every problem. I’m starting to wonder if we’re headed for a world where solar/wind powers residential activities, and a whole mess of different battery systems store that power for when solar/wind production goes too low. Meanwhile, the excess of the excess gets turned into green hydrogen or ammonia which powers most of the industrial sector when their solar/wind can’t meet their demand.

@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet That is what we need, many overlapping solutions.I live in a solar/wind residence--some of this is already happening!

Not just storage, but transport. This would make it much more cost effective to produce hydrogen in Australia in the form of ammonia, and export it.

@@theharper1 Of course, storage and transport are really one and the same problem--and that problem comes from the inability to efficiently compress hydrogen and the lack of an affordable hydrogen sponge (the known hydrogen sponge is platinum...not exactly an affordable material to make a gas tank out of!)

But why are they using ammonia, and not Ammonium? That has an extra hydrogen atom.

Also ammonia is lighter than air and can provide lift (this is a joke, if you do not understand)

If aviation uses NH3 for fuel isn't the production of NOx as pollution absolutely disastrous.

@@idjles no they want to use green hydrogen, but in order to facilitate transportation, they are considering binding hydrogen with ammonia, since ammonia is more easily transported and well known.

@@TWCHHK how will the ammonia be used? Will it be converted back to hydrogen before loading onto the plane?

@@adrianthoroughgood1191 yes that's the idea. And obviously, all the sources of energy must be supplied by renewables.

The answer is simple in the case of Australia. The country has vast fossil fuel exports giving that industry an excessive lobbying advantage.

As sad as it is to say, I think it’s cause the fossil fuel companies decide that they can make more money in the short term by not changing and they push the government and citizens to agree with them. It feels like too many of our leaders are currently taking the stance of “this won’t harm me personally so I don’t care.”

@@christopherfry2844 And yet there are movements even in Australia towards production of green hydrogen, especially for use in the mining industry.

@@simongross3122 Agreed. It makes you wonder if the good guys can push the transition fast enough for our collective survival.

@@richardlangley90 Glad you said "our" survival. I'm not at all worried for the planet; I'm worried for our own species.

and fish makes tons of ammonia!!

;)

Gavin, you aren't "only a musician". You're a musician! And that is awesome. -a technogeek who appreciates the importance of art.

Hey, there's nothing "only" about being a a musician

Yep. That's ammonia dissolved in water, forming ammonium hydroxide (NH₃ + H₂O ⟶ NH₄OH). It's not pure ("anhydrous") ammonia, which is a gas at room temperature. For serious uses you need the gas, which you can condense to a liquid at -33°C, which is cold but not _that_ cold.

It's not intended to replace Li-ion batteries. It's a method for making NH3 that happens to use Li-ion tech.

Most of the algal blooms in lakes and other surfaces waters are due runoff of fertilizers from lawns and farms, animal waste runoff from feedlots, or raw or improperly treated sewage discharges. It is the generally high nitrogen and phosphorus content in the runoff that stimulates runaway algal growth. The nitrogen is mostly in the form of urea or ammonium salts.

I think I know the headlines that you’re referring to and they don’t exactly word it correctly. They make it sound like the Carbon Capture system is creating more carbon than it’s capturing but it’s moreso that it’s capturing less than 50%. Don’t get me wrong, I also want us to completely break away from fossil fuels rather than thinking that putting carbon capture on everything solves our problems! I just worry that wording it incorrectly will make people want to take the current carbon capture systems away which will cause our emissions to rise not fall.

Ammonia is created and transported in large volumes safely every day. There a huge infrastructure in place for shipping and piping the stuff.

@@DanielASchaeffer - TS was referring to the use of ammonia as fuel for transportation, not in the transportation of ammonia itself. Gasoline is a preferred fuel due to its stability at room temp and pressure. Pure liquid ammonia boils at -33C (-28F). As a fuel for mass, public use, it's a very dangerous product.

@@valkyriefrost5301 But is the video suggesting that it be used as a fuel? I thought it was just to be used as a means of transporting hydrogen.

@@danyoutube7491 No it would be used as a fuel. Not in cars or even trucks, but for ships and airplanes.

@@danyoutube7491 ​ - Dave (JHaT) mentions many uses of ammonia in the video, one of which is it's potential use as a transportation fuel (like air travel). I could be wrong, but I believe Tom (OP) was talking about ammonia being use for transportation (like air travel). A jet fuel spill is a bad and dangerous thing. An ammonia spill of the same magnitude would be extremely dangerous as it's a highly toxic gas that can kill without having to be ignited.

Agreed. We really went off the deep end in the 80’s trying to manufacture everything where we had the lowest labor costs possible. That was a mistake and led to a lot of the issues that we’re experiencing now. It’ll be good to see things become decentralized again.

The problem with methane is that it produces carbon dioxide when it burns. If you care about that sort of thing, you either have to capture all of the CO₂, or produce the methane from carbon that is already in the carbon cycle. It does not appear either of these is practical at the moment. Likewise for other common fuels like Jet-A. Hydrogen doesn't involve carbon at all. Obviously the energy to produce hydrogen gas had to come from somewhere, but the idea is to produce it using renewable energy. However, hydrogen has the energy density problem that you note. It has excellent specific energy (energy per unit mass) but very poor energy density unless you compress it within an inch of its life, or liquefy it, both of which cost a lot of energy. Ammonia, the subject of this video, is a middle ground. Its specific energy is only ⅙ that of hydrogen gas, but if you liquefy it (at -33°C, which is cold but not _that_ cold), energy density is 6.7 times that of hydrogen gas. That's still only ⅓ the energy density of Jet-A, but one hopes it will be a great deal easier to produce at scale than, say, biodiesel.

Why the hell do we want carbon free. Carbon is the building block of live, without carbon without life. It's so sad that scientific minded people are indoctrinated by propaganda.

@@seanleith5312 - You're either a troll or just ignorant of ecology. Please educate yourself.

@@seanleith5312 Where are you form? We are talking about green house gases.

@@janami-dharmam Often times a little knowledge is more dangerous than complete ignorance. The other pithy saying that comes to mind is " don't blabber BS and folks won't tell you you are full of BS", it went something like that, but got the point; do you Sean? FR

@@janami-dharmam I know you are talking about green house gases, that's where the indoctrination you are in. 1. CO2 is a trace gas. it doesn't cause anything. 2. There is zero evidence CO2 increases temperature.3. CO2 as a greenhouse gas is because CO2 is plant food, not because it makes it warmer. Those people talk about something they have zero knowledge of.

Yea, moving to green fertilizer options would be huge for reducing our global emissions. I was incredibly motivated by this video!

I really hope it does. If we could break the fertilizer industry away from the fossil fuel industry then that could be huge for our long term emissions!

In California, ammonia is often bubbled into irrigation water where it forms ammonium hydroxide. It is common to see trucks delivering large round ball-shaped trailer tanks of liquid ammonia to farms, or to see permanent ammonia tank installations.

A mix probably. Some inventions are too complex to scale, others get bought by big companies, but mostly it takes time to replace existing infrastructure. For example the Netherlands started rebuilding their roads and streets to make them better for bikes and pedestrians. This is still ongoing, since the 80s. Maybe we should grab our pikes and sticks and make a rattle?! Probably a bad idea though ^^

Scale up is probably the issue. One thing is to have a small reactor running, with a few grams of complicated catalyst and cathode/anode materials. But to scale up, apart from scale up issues of the ammonia production process itself, you also need to have a large scale production of the catalysts and anode/cathode materials in place. Making a few gram of catalyst in the lab is quite different from a production in a kg or ton scale, which probably is needed. Furthermore, as these technologies are completely new, all sourcing and logistics systems have to be established from scratch, which is also time consuming.

In short, a year is way too short to expect any tech to go from promising testing/prototype stages to being developed/invested in/approved by governments and established as a significant industrial reality.

Because there i nothing great about any of this garbage. The war on carbon and forcing the world on to wind and solar will result in poverty and death for billions of people. especially hard hit will be ones already suffering in poverty.

@Han Boetes Just be sure to carry an extra water tank to neutralise the ammonia if you have a leak :) .