Renewable ammonia: the future of fuels?

Half a decade or so ago, it seemed that the time had arrived for the hydrogen economy. But when the engineers of the world began to consider the details of using vast supplies of renewables to generate hydrogen in quantities that have never been produced previously and moving it safely around the world, they saw a daunting prospect, for a variety of reasons. These included difficulties in using existing bulk carriers and pipelines for hydrogen transportation as well as the safety aspects of the need to store large amounts of hydrogen in transport hubs. The research community then began to cast around for alternatives, compounds that could carry hydrogen but were safer and more straightforward to transport in large quantities over great distances. Ammonia rapidly emerged as a leading…