Ammonia Powered Car ( update )

This post started out with the idea of analyzing the costs of bio-Ammonia, so I put together a couple of posts and considered doing a re-post of both.  The first was this post:   Hydrolysis (electrolysis) of Ammonia  That one was about using an ammonia solution as a carrier for hydrogen for fuel cells.  Then I remembered that you can actually run an internal combustion engine on ammonia, so I looked up that post.  Thus, it has turned into an update of the Ammonia Powered Car.

Not that using ammonia for a fuel cell is a bad idea.  That can come later.  That's because as Greg Vezina points out, we already have the infrastructure for making and storing ammonia.  We can use existing infrastructure and automotive technologies--- no need for exotic new technologies.  Therefore, every car on the road can be converted and will run on this stuff now.   Vezina's video:


With respect to the costs of biofuels, Dynamotive's existing technology can convert biomass into fuel at competitive prices. Now, if you were to get the biomass at the lower end of the cost range as depicted in this graphic below, you can definitely compete with fossil fuels on the basis of price.

http://www.dynamotive.com/fuels/#industrialfuels

So, $30 a ton for biomass can yield drop-in fuels at less than $2 a gallon.  How much would seaweed cost to produce per ton?  A 64K dollar question, that is.

If that question can be answered affirmatively, then all of this can be done economically and simultaneously cleaning up the environment.  What's not to like about it?