Sellout On The Great Lakes

Last week, some very disturbing events took place regarding 52 very large freighters (1000 foot-long class with 40,000 to 70,000 ton cargo holds) based in and on the Great Lakes. These ships, which carry millions of tons of heavy cargoes across the Lakes through the locks of St. Lawrence Seaway to the world, burn the dirtiest dregs of refinery scum in the world -- bunker C oil. This stuff is so sludgy it has to be heated to flow into the old diesels that burn it. 13 of the 52 "Lakers" as they are called have no pollution controls whatsoever. Each puts out enough pollution to equate to over 100,000 cars and trucks. All 52 produce as much CO2 as all the cars in Michigan, and they run these engines 24/7/365.

The story can be gleaned from the Washington Post this week in these three articles:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/22/AR2...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/27/AR2...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/28/AR2...

and the latest herein:
Nation Digest
Thursday, October 29, 2009
ENVIRONMENT

A pact on cleaner fuel for Great Lakes ships

Lawmakers reached a compromise Tuesday on a proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule that would force ships to burn much cleaner fuel.

Language added to an Interior Department appropriations bill would exempt 13 Great Lakes steamships from the rule and allow the remaining 52 U.S.-flagged Great Lakes ships to ask for a waiver if more expensive, cleaner fuel is unavailable or would cause them undue economic hardship. The language also calls for the EPA to report within six months on the rule's economic impact.

The compromise was spearheaded by Reps. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) and James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.) and other Great Lakes legislators because of fears that the rule would increase shipping costs enough to harm the global competitiveness of regional commodities such as steel and grain.

-- Kari Lydersen

Obey and Oberstar have great influence over the EPA. They control the purse strings. There are as you may know great forces at work here to save jobs today at the expense of the environment and deal a crushing blow to the green jobs industries nascent in the Midwest (Wind power systems and ammonia production from renewable power). The advocates for change are subjugated by the old economy stalwarts who are conning the Congressmen to allow the old technologies to continue unabated and destroy the newer alternatives. The EPA is bending to their will.

What should be done is to retrofit all these ships with ammonia-burning systems with ammonia fuel tanks. The ammonia will burn in the old diesels with virtually the same energy efficiency yet produce zero emissions of CO2 and unburned hydrocarbons and toxic gasses (bunker C is loaded with sulfur, lead, mercury, arsenic, radioactive elements, and other crud). The effluent from ammonia combustion is only nitrogen and water vapor. We can feed ammonia to the ships' ports via 3000 miles of pipelines that currently branch into the heartland of the Midwest. Renewable energy producers should be producing ammonia from the new wind farms if the markets within the impacted states allow that to happen, but current ammonia sources can do it today. This is a great opportunity for the EPA to take point in a campaign to stop 5 million cars' worth of CO2 pollution right now.

Tags: ammonia, energy, farms, great, lakes, midwest, producers, renewable, shipping, wind

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Comment by Dr. Paul A. Curto on November 6, 2009 at 7:47am: CC:
The 3000 miles of 10" pipeline are currently filled with ammonia and are fed by the refineries around the mouth of the Mississippi and the offloading docks from the ammonia tankers that import the stuff from abroad. They are designed to feed the largest farm centers throughout the Midwest with millions of tons of anhydrous ammonia to use for fertilizer (about 82% of all ammonia is used for that purpose). Interesting that these pipelines overlap to a large degree the location of many proposed Midwestern wind farms. If they use SSAS (Solid State Ammonia Synthesis), they should be able to feed the ammonia they produce directly into the pipelines whenever they're not generating electricity for the grid. SSAS uses around 6000 kWH of power per MT of ammonia, which has 4350 kWH of fuel value.

Some of these "Lakers" boats are over 100 years old. The cost and time of conversion depends on the configuration and tankage required to replace the fuel tanks. Ammonia is liquid at 128 psi, but also at room pressure if the temperature is maintained at -33F. Since ammonia water absorption refrigeration can be done easily with the use of some of the fuel, that would be preferred to keep down the cost of conversion. A big boat might require a lot of ammonia as fuel, at around a dollar a gallon, and the storage cost is around $7 a gallon. A gallon of diesel equivalent is 2.5 gallons of ammonia (about the same as CNG).

Both Bunker C and ammonia must be heated before injection into the diesel engine. The line heaters don't cost much. The injectors must be custom made to the engine, probably around $10k to $40k for each injector.

Comment by Troy Benjegerdes on November 5, 2009 at 10:41pm: Speaking of following the money..
If SSAS makes it in 18 months, and comes close to the projections I've seen for efficiency, then given what I expect natural gas prices to do (go all over the place) in the next 10 years, that puts an SSAS wind to ammonia plant on better than a 30% return. PER YEAR

Comment by Steve Gruhn on November 3, 2009 at 10:55pm: Dr Paul,We
Right on. It is great to have more supporters on the NH3 train, We are making progress slowly but sure. We will take all of the supporters we can find.
Steve Gruhn
Freedom Fertilizer / Wind to NH3
freedomfertilizer,com

Comment by Dr. Paul A. Curto on November 2, 2009 at 9:36am: Jim,
As a pessimist, one may be inclined to believe you. As an optimist and a progressive, I would rather crush the oil industry and make them eat the Bunker C. They can be forced to use hydrogen cracking to separate the carbon sludge from its impurities, and sell a better distillate without sulfur and the heavy metals. We can stop them, the same way that the Sierra Club has stopped over 100 new coal power plant licenses. Ban Bunker C the same way that we banned DDT!

Comment by Jim Martin on November 2, 2009 at 9:30am: As long as we are using oil, we will continue to use the dirty bunker C cut. I think the real issue is to reduce the use of the cuts of oil that provide most of the profit, such as gasoline and kerosene/diesel. Then there will be less bunker C available, and current users of bunker C will find other ways to get their energy. There may also be ways to reduce pollution from sulfur and other contaminants by filtering fuel or stack exhaust. Once the oil is out of the ground, the carbon will somehow be burned and become carbon dioxide and contribute to global warming.

Comment by Dr. Paul A. Curto on November 2, 2009 at 5:05am: CC:
The owners of 100 year-old ships are not known to me -- any more than Bahamian and Lithuanian registry freighters on the oceans. Old money hides so well that only the Swiss bank vaults carry the info in safety deposit boxes. Our friendly and eager to please Congressmen know who paid them off. Ask them.

Lou is right: that $15 billion a year that Obama promised for renewables needs to be spent. Why not spend it on something valuable to our future and our very survival.

As T Boone Pickens said in his treatise – “$700 Billion new U.S.
industry.”
Using NH3 as the main fuel will allow any country
to produce it’s own transportation fuel and create a
large number of high quality, long-term jobs. The
wild price fluctuations that have made long-term
investments in energy products will no longer be a
problem and allow sound, long-term investments to
be made.

Comment by Dr. Paul A. Curto on November 2, 2009 at 4:58am: This report by Norm Olson of the Iowa Energy Center sums up the advantages of ammonia.

Comment by Lou De Frog on November 1, 2009 at 5:29pm: So what is the problem? You print the money and loan it to them interest free. They create a sustainable system that makes a profit and they pay off their loan. Money is not a problem when it is owned by the public (read Government) instead of private individuals who can exercise their power position and control everything for personal benefit.

Comment by CCVirginia on November 1, 2009 at 4:35pm: Well, ammonia is dangerous - it is fuel! Wood is also dangerous (I dropped it on my foot once). It is just far less dangous than killing the planet and the economy (whichever one cares about most). I would see some "risk" as justified, the argument may be able to be made with respect to cars in the near term, but not ships - after all, we have lots of ammonia on ships today and they blow up infrequently.

Of course in DC, such "reasons" seem to follow the $ - and I will bet those 100 year old ships represent old money. The DOE, EPA, and DHS shuld do their job representing the best interests of the entire country. Perhaps you should publish some of their names.

Comment by Dr. Paul A. Curto on November 1, 2009 at 3:55pm: CC:
The $7/gal is a one-time capital cost for pressurized tanks. The O&M costs are pennies per trip. The $2.5 per gallon is cheap for an emission-free fuel. Bunker C costs about 2/3 the price of regular diesel fuel, around $1.80 a gallon, but can't legally be burned because of its extraordinary sulfur content, ~30,000 ppm. Ammonia is at parity with diesel.

SSAS is projected to go into mass production systems within 18 months, assuming no further hitches present themselves. The real problem is that the DOE, EPA, and DHS have become obstructionist re: ammonia. They think it's too dangerous. It is -- to oil and gas fanatics. It's the ultimate fuel for all applications.