The trouble with ammonia

( Sixth in a series)

This is something that I had forgotten about.  There was an accident here 36 years ago in the Houston area which involved anhydrous ammonia.  By the way, anhydrous means pure ammonia, not the watered-down kind that you buy at grocery stores.

The accident was caused by the sloshing around of the ammonia inside its tank and excessive speed of the 18 wheeler that was hauling it.  It went too fast on the ramp and overturned, going over the ramp, and landing on the freeway below.

The accident killed 7 people and injured over 100 people.  The pictures of the ammonia cloud is scary.  I suppose you could get into the middle of it not knowing what you had just driven into and having it be something that could kill you.

The cloud dissipated in 5 minutes according to the story.

An event of this kind may explain why ammonia hasn't caught on as a fuel source---either for internal combustion engines or fuel cells.

Is there any way to handle ammonia safely?

One possibility is to water it down to household strength, which would be about 10%.  You would use the current distribution method to get the ammonia where it goes to now, but once it gets there, you would dilute it for further transportation to its point of sale.

Once it got to its final distribution point, you could de-water it and then crack it into hydrogen on a "as needed" basis.

Why would you do it that way?  That's because hydrogen has its problems too.

It's always something, eh?

Update:

This is a little surprising.  The cost of hydrogen was as low as "1.00 to 2.00" lb back in 2002.  That's with lower fossil fuel prices back then, though.  Still, you have natural gas which is abundant today, so the prices shouldn't be too different from that.  Something to think about.