Ammonia, the fuel of the future: a refrain

 A couple of years back I did a post here about a post I had done at Foresight about a decade or so back.

Ammonia (NH3)

The basic idea is that ammonia is a close to ideal fuel for a near-nanotech chemical technology, in that it carries hydrogen which can be oxidized in a fuel cell (producing nothing but water), and the rest is merely nitrogen, which is already the majority component of air.

One of the key reasons for revisiting something like this is to check up on your prowess as a technological forecaster. My recent post here was to point out some recent advance that seemed to bring us closer to the ability to use ammonia as envisioned. So when I saw another reference in the technical literature, I thought to look around and see how far the efforts had got. 

Imagine my surprise when I discovered a substantial literature, conferences, and companies at the point of viable commercialization. Rather than talk about that myself, I will refer you to the Ammonia Energy Association's review of ammonia for fuel cells. Rummage around the site for much more information.

A little brief background: the hydrogen from the ammonia molecule is what fuels the cell and generates electricity. In the most common standard type of fuel cell, the PEM (proton exchange membrane), ammonia itself poisons the chemistry and has to be separated into nitrogen and hydrogen ahead of time. There has been substantial progress in separation devices. 

But even more important, at a best guess, is the fact that there are other kinds of fuel cell than the (acid-chemistry) PEM, but which are not poisoned by ammonia and can be fed it directly, without a separate separation phase. These include alkaline-chemistry fuel cells, and solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). These have come a long way in the past decade. The state of the art is that SOFCs are efficient enough for small stationary power units (1-10 kW range) but still too heavy for transportation, although approaching something that might be usable on a ship or locomotive fairly soon.

Your flying car, not so soon. But we're probably only talking another decade.

For a futurist, this is close enough to qualify as a win. In my previous post, I pointed out that "Ammonia, the Fuel of the Future" scanned with a classic American tune, "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean." To celebrate, I sat down and penned out a couple of full verses. You may now sing them with your friends in full glee:

Ammonia, the fuel of the future!
your vector of useful energy
for your house, for your car, your computer,
for airplanes; even for the ships at sea.
It's a liquid you pour into a fuel tank,
Yet ammonia's entirely carbon free;
From the good old days of Bosch and Haber,
We understand the right chemistry.

Understand the right chemistry!
Understand the right chemistry!
From the good old days of Bosch and Haber,
We understand the right chemistry.

Ammonia, the fuel of the future!
With power for you and for me;
'Tis silent and couldn't be smoother;
when piped into an SOFC.
Do not thermalize your potential;
We know how to handle NH3 --
No need for Carnot and his limits
to generate electricity!

Generating electricity!
Generating electricity!
Ammonia, the fuel of the future,
generating electricity!

... and there you have it!

One more look at COVID numbers

 Given that my fit of a lognormal to excess deaths in my previous post worked so well, 

I thought I would revisit the stats and see how things were going two months later and whether I might need to add a third wave to the fit.

The actual national numbers don't appear to support that, so I thought perhaps I would take the state-by-state data (from the CDC) and see if there were separate patterns that made up the whole curve. I still couldn't see much in the way of a third wave, but this illuminated the first and second waves quite a bit:

Each trace is a single state (plus DC and PR with NYC separated out) of the absolute number by which all-cause mortality exceeded the high end of the expected range. Note that you would not even see the normal winter flu mortality peak in such a graph: the "expected" number goes up along with the actual deaths.

It's the orange line on this graph. It cycles between 50 to 60 thousand deaths per week over the course of a normal year. Note in particular that it's going up now, as people are not outside as much and not getting as much Vitamin D. Also note that the total number of people dying from any cause whatsoever is flattening and they will soon cross.

The major thing to note in the first graph is that the states making up the bulk of the first wave are different than the states making up the second wave. To a rough approximation, each state only gets one wave. States that didn't participate in the April or August waves are now getting their own waves, incoherently, so there's no distinct third wave but a statistical mush.

Here's the same graph again, but instead of absolute numbers we have the percentage over expected deaths for the particular state:

Now the vertical scale is percent. New York got up to 6 times the expected death rate in April, but nowhere got much more than 50% in August, and the average in the statistical mush is getting back down to zero, with a spread of 10-20%.

Note that that's not quite normal: normal is that the TOP of the spread is zero, as on the left-hand side of the graph a month before the pandemic hit. But remember the average American has a roughly 1% chance of dying in a given year; now he has a 1.1% chance of dying next year. Unless the vaccines work out, of course.