Use of Ammonia for Heat, Power and Propulsion

To date, a number of mechanical, electric, thermal and chemical approaches have been developed for storing electric energy for small devices and utility-scale services. However, the only sufficiently flexible mechanism allowing large quantities of energy to be stored over long periods is chemical energy storage in the form of carbon (as with existing hydrocarbon resources) or hydrogen. Fossil fuel consumption rate is on decline as a consequence of environmental issues, whilst current implementation of pure hydrogen technologies presents several technical barriers. Therefore another chemical with high hydrogen content considered for potential storage and as a fuel source is ammonia. For this reason, this chapter approaches the most common methods for conversion of ammonia to power. This collaborative work includes details of the fundamentals behind each technology, their use into ammonia-fuelled systems and their application in demonstrative cases that have been conceived around the world. This chapter aims to establish the background around the subject for readers interested in the development of ammonia-fuelled devices, thus contributing to the progression of the concept for the reduction of fossil fuels via the increase in technologies capable of producing zero-carbon energy at various scales.