The world’s first ammonia-powered zero-emissions tractor successfully completed its first demonstration run at the Advanced Energy Center at Stony Brook University in New York last week.
The midsized John Deere tractor had its diesel engine replaced with an “ammonia to power” system developed by a startup called Amogy. The system converts the energy-dense chemical into hydrogen, which then powers a 100 kW hydrogen fuel cell.
Amogy’s system can power the tractor for several hours on a 60-gallon tank of ammonia. But it’s not used directly in the fuel cell; instead, the ammonia is cracked in a reactor to make hydrogen on-demand, which is then used to power the fuel cell. “We are using ammonia as a hydrogen carrier, meaning that in our process, we are still using the fuel cell technology. But instead of using hydrogen as a fuel, we use ammonia,” said Seonghoon Woo, co-founder and CEO at Amogy.
While there are inefficiencies in the system, Amogy says that the higher energy density of ammonia in the first place means you can easily carry enough fuel to compensate, coming out ahead of a normal hydrogen fuel cell in terms of both energy and power density. Learn more at Amogy. (Source: ARSTechnica, Johnathan Gitlin)
