Re:Ammonia as a fuel for compression ignition engines
by dTal on Saturday August 22, 2020 @08:15AM
(#24243607)
I'm confused. If we're stipulating carbon-neutral liquid fuel from renewable energy, what precisely is wrong with depolymerizing organic matter into ordinary hydrocarbons? Sure it generates CO2 at the point of use, but it's offset by the photosynthesis that made the organic matter. As long as the carbon cycle is a closed loop there shouldn't be problem, right?
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Re:Ammonia as a fuel for compression ignition engines
by klodolph on Saturday August 22, 2020 @09:52AM
(#24244139)
I don't think the closed loop argument is sound. We care about the total amount of carbon in the loop, we care specifically about the amount in the atmosphere. That's the equilibrium point, and there's a lot you can do to push around the equilibrium point in a closed system.
Re:Ammonia as a fuel for compression ignition engines
by dTal on Saturday August 22, 2020 @10:21AM
(#24244314)
Consider - we've been digging up ancient, sequestered carbon and putting it in the atmosphere on a mass industrial scale for hundreds of years. I don't think that anything we can do within the confines of a closed loop system is going to remotely compare with that.
Or, to put it another way - we've been treating the atmosphere as a sink. But if we stop digging up carbon, we'll still need carbon, and it will become a source instead. By buffering that resource into fuel stocks and plastics and everything else we use carbon for, the only direction CO2 levels can go is down.