Why not ammonia, NH3, as liquid fuel?

[Mars Rover]

Billy T. If the compression can be done in a system where the heat produced can be used for space heating or for heating a steam generator for piston or turbine engine to run a mill or electricity generator, a lot more of the air compression input energy can be recovered and used that way. And the simple and cheap on board liquid storage and handling makes it even more competitive with more dangerous , complex and costly on-board storage and handling (fuel cells) and expensive Lithium Ion batteries. I wouldn't be so hasty as to rule out compressed/liquid air "battery" systems just yet.

[Billy T]

Billy T. If the compression can be done in a system where the heat produced can be used for space heating or for heating a steam generator for piston or turbine engine to run a mill or electricity generator, a lot more of the air compression input energy can be recovered and used that way. And the simple and cheap on board liquid storage and handling makes it even more competitive with more dangerous , complex and costly on-board storage and handling (fuel cells) and expensive Lithium Ion batteries. I wouldn't be so hasty as to rule out compressed/liquid air "battery" systems just yet.

Well heat recovery would sort of imply small home units in most case and in all cases is direct conversion of electric energy that could have run a heat pump to get several times more home heating with much less complexity than handling liquid air.

Further more all the energy that runs the car is disguised electric energy - not like say a car running on Natural gas, of other fuel with chemical energy released. Effectively you have an electric car with at best the energy efficiency of ~1/2, probably less than 1/3 that of the all electric cars now on the road now.

[Tero]

Here are some of the reasons for not using ammonia as opposed to hydrogen

1) It puts off Nitrous Oxide which is very bad for you

2) It smells awful

3) It is more expensive to produce than Hydrogen

that sums it up

[Billy T]

that sums it up

You quote positorn as satating; "3) It is more expensive to produce than Hydrogen" I went back three pages but could not find that. I want to know on what basis that is true. I.e. producion energy required to later get set amount of releasable energy? OR dollars to do same OR per H2 molecule vs NH3 molecule OR per Km etc.

I also consider "it smells auful" an advantage in that yoj can notice a very tiny leak.

On 1) it is true that soild bacteria do make more green house damage via production of NOx when NH3 is used as fertilizer to grow corn more rapdly in cold, short growing season, Iowa than the CO2 the corn based ETOH will release as fuel does, but is that the NOx being discussed? We need some comparison releases of NOx if speaking of the release by various fuels. Gasoline , especially in high compression engines makes NOx too. Which would make more, is sort of thing that would be used full to know. Fact that gasoline or ammonia fueled engine makes NOx with no statement about their relative NOx production per mile driven is nearly useless.