Toyota’s Ammonia Engine | Hacker News Reader

Toyota’s Ammonia Engine

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39 pointsbelter34 comments

Toyota have a long and storied history of gratuitous PR-sourced puff pieces about future energy tech with a near-zero batting average for accuracy and plausibility. Their reputation for making proclamations about future technology is, in my personal opinion, about as trashed as they could ever make it.

"The end of EVs," really? This from the same company which sunk untold billions into convincing us that hydrogen would be the fuel of the future? This from the same company which just recently[0] lauded how they'd quickly leapfrog the EV competition with a magical solid state battery that definitely exists, pinkie promise? Did they think we'd forget how Toyota described this battery as being in the "production engineering" stage six years ago?[1]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36833836

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14853093

In 2020 Tesla overtook Toyota as the most valuable car company, which is of course ludicrous and stupid. But Toyota probably took a note at that time about the importance of PR puff pieces.

But indulging in PR puff shouldn't be the reason for outright dismissal of the ammonia engine. One thing that's undeniable is that Toyota understands cars, and particularly what kind of cars we really want. It knew EV's short range would be a problem (hence the plug-in hybrids which I think are the real winners -- you can actually get by without ever going to the gas station if you're just commuting for work, but yet you can still go on long trips no problem... there you go, Toyota solved EVs).

Toyota has working prototypes of ammonia engines, they seem to work, they do not emit carbon-based emissions and are highly efficient. It's built a good product and it knows how to scale and I expect it will -- but it also needs a working infrastructure for ammonia supply and needs to do PR work to pave the way for that. Ammonia is a decidedly good and clean energy source compared to current generation of batteries that are made from relatively finite resources, source their electrical power from questionable places depending on where you are, and some small question marks still remain about the accumulation of battery waste as EVs gain popularity. I, for one, am excited to see ammonia-based technologies for energy store and fuel.

With the one wrinkle of ammonia being a poisonous gas. Making it significantly more dangerous than either gasoline or batteries.

Ammonia-based technologies for storage and fuel is going to result in unnecessary deaths.

Its more a question of how many deaths per year per unit of energy stored. Batteries are still capable of killing people but its rare, so looking at this number between the 3 storage types would describe the actual risk

> But indulging in PR puff shouldn't be the reason for outright dismissal of the ammonia engine.

I dismiss Toyota's claims because there's no damn evidence for them. It's vapourware, like Toyota's supposed solid state battery. They say they have working prototypes of these revolutionary products, and perhaps they do. I don't dismiss the possibility that they do. But Toyota need to actually show their work if they want to work past their trashed reputation.

Any alternative fuel will have to establish sufficient infrastructure for refueling, that will be a major challenge. It's also a challenge for EVs, but those have the advantage that you can also charge them at home in many cases. And ammonia is something you certainly don't want to refuel in an open system like for gas currently.

You'd need a technology with really convincing advantages to offset the cost of yet another refueling infrastructure. And any chemical storage that isn't fossil fuel will have to offset the inefficiency of synthesizing that fuel using electricity. Not sure how much more efficient synthesizing ammonia would be compared to synthesizing gas, but probably not efficient enough to be viable.

I agree...

Any alternative has two core issues... Adoption curve issues and scalability/potential. What do you do when adoption is 2%, 20%, etc. If issues exist at 5% adoption rates can't be solved, those at 50% will never be relevant.

Toyota's much talked about new line on EVs is all about this. Elons intital (underpants) plan for Tesla was all about this. Not just destinations, destinations with passable pathways.

There are easy places to get started. Buses, trucks, specific locales that can be served by dedicated fueling facilities. To make that a useful plan though, you need to be able to reach level L+1 from L, and a realistic vision of pathways to L+n.

I'd also note that it was mostly Tesla's financiers that made an "investment case" where Tesla's potential is proportional to the EV market broadly.

Tesla's Elon strategy never (openly) looked beyond model 3. Cubertruck is strategic, but not in a sense that has much to do with EV adoption rates in general.

There's also the small matter that ammonia is both highly corrosive and highly toxic. Gasoline will fuck you up over years if you're exposed to it often enough, but ammonia can be fatal in a matter of seconds depending on the vapor concentration.

You drown in your own mucus; it's very high up there on the "shitty ways to die" chart. I'll never forget the cashcam video from a state trooper coming across an ammonia truck with a leak. He inadvertently walks into the gas plume, starts coughing, collapses, and you can hear him choking to death from his body mic.

Ammonia is also responsible for a lot of deaths in places with large refrigeration systems (food processing/storage, mostly.)

Toyota is jumping the shark with their anti-ev bullshit.

Take all that you found out about ammonia from the post above.

Now remember the videos of people putting gasoline in plastic bags and open tubs in the back of their car during the covid shortages.

It will happen with ammonia too if it with some miracle becomes as big as gasoline. People will die.

https://archive.ph/czmDL

Ammonia, with an energy density of 5.3KWh/kg and a production cost of ~$1/kg doesn't look very competitive with electricity, even compared to renewables (typically around $0.1/kg)

Transportable in mass quantities, which is hard with electricity.

We already invested a lot of money into transporting electricity.

That's mostly time-of-use though.

> even compared to renewables (typically around $0.1/kg)

A kg of renewables? What exactly does that look like?

Based on this link[1] I think he meant $0.10/KWh which would be compared against the $0.19/KWh from Ammonia.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/478049/global-utility-sc...

Oops, I meant $0.1/kwh, not kg

Toyota's tactic for a few years has been trying to Osborne Effect[0] consumers into not switching brands.

"We'll have a 1000km battery EV / viable hydrogen car / ammonia engine coming REAL SOON, so don't buy an EV now! But do get one of our hybrids while waiting for our industry-shattering new invention in a just few years".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect

Oh, look, people who think nitrogen oxides are better than carbon oxides. While we're at it, what's the energy density of hydrogen sulfide?

Main combustion product is N2, not NOx.

And that is no laughing matter!

Just another way to prop up the fossil fuel industry. Just like hydrogen propulsion, the source of the ammonia would ultimately be natural gas.

Maybe for cargo vessels, unlikely for cars.

This reads as a press release I must say, anyone know how viable this is and what it produces as it exhaust gasses?

In the other ammonia conversion article the comments noted that the combustion is incomplete, but I assume then a closed circuit system could ‘distill’ the leftovers back into the tank and let out the NOx exhaust out (?)

NOx, the type of stuff that sparked Dieselgate? Great idea...

NOx is a greenhouse gas, isn’t it? Or have I got it confused with something else?

My bad, somebody else noted that the main product is N2 and not NOx, but I am not knowledgeable on this enough to point out the results. I was referring to https://nh3fuelassociation.org/2018/12/07/performance-of-amm... which is specifically for co-firing on natgas turbines.

Ideally by combustion with oxygen you get water and nitrogen. Which seems fine.

Though ammonia is highly toxic and there's probably a lot of engineering involved to get this safe and efficient.

I think Toyota did not provide enough details on the work. They might have some great engineering done but needs to be seen. If this paper is to be trusted, for dual fuel engines benefits are minimal.

"Nitro-compounds and GHG exhaust emissions of a pilot diesel-ignited ammonia dual-fuel engine under various operating conditions" - https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03797#

"...Unburned NH3 increases with raising ammonia content but decreases with increasing engine load and speed. The NO+NO2 tendency shows a non-linearity trend with increasing ammonia content, while a trade-off correlation is linked to N2O. The N2O emission of ammonia engine significantly weakens the beneficial effect of GHG reduction, the 30% and 50% decarbonization targets need at least 40% and 60% ammonia energy without regard to N2O effect, while at least 65% and 80% ammonia energy respectively with considering N2O. N2O presents a parabolic-like tendency with AERs. Advanced pilot-diesel injection timing helps to reduce both NH3 and N2O, but this effect becomes insignificant as the AER is less than 0.4..."

On the positive side...Everybody will be laughing their way to their destination.( N2O )

Didn't they (the CEO?) say the same thing about their Hydrogen engine six months or so ago?

Didn't they (the CEO?) also say the same thing about their solid state battery six months or so ago?

Considering the article mentions compression and spark ignition as advanced technologies I very much doubt this is independent and not a pr piece.

That article is absolute ignorant garbage.

> "An ammonia engine is a type of internal combustion engine that uses ammonia as its primary fuel source. What makes ammonia unique is its composition[...]"

No shit, Sherlock. What makes anything unique is its composition.

> Another, more complex method involves using ammonia as the primary fuel source, relying on advanced technologies like spark ignition [...]

Hold me...

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