The Oil Drum: Europe

160 comments on Natural Gas: how big is the problem?

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Nick Rouse on December 5, 2006 - 9:08pm

High temperature nuclear or solar energy can produce hydrogen from water by the sulphur iodine thermal route. The Haber process can produce ammonia from the hydrogen and nitrogen from the air with pumping using a little renewable or nuclear derived electricity or even direct wind pumping. The solar thermal route would be ideal for North African countries with a lot of sun and desert and not much else to set up for export to Europe. The intermittency of the sun is no problem with a few storage tanks. As a liquid it could be pumped to Europe. Otherwise it could be converted to solid ammonium nitrate by reacting some of it with oxygen from the air to form oxides of nitrogen and dissolving it in water to form nitric acid to react with the rest of the ammonia.

This process may not be economic now but there must come a time when rising oil and gas prices make it so.

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billp on December 5, 2006 - 10:14pm

Thanks for the explanation.

My concern is that in the future where are they going to get all of the energy [BTUs] required to blast the overburder and coal? And diesel to transport the coal?

http://www.prosefights.org/coal/northantelope/northantelope.htm#overburden