The Environmentally Friendly Fuel That Can Kill You | Lightning Round
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- čas přidán 26. 07. 2024
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In today’s Lightning Round video, we’re going to talk about a recently announced ammonia engine Toyota’s been working on, along with stories about nutritional depletion in our food, a chat with author Scott Carney, and an update on the Earth With Rings video. Enjoy!
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LINKS LINKS LINKS
www.motortrend.com/news/china...
www.bloomberg.com/news/articl... wall#xj4y7vzkg
www.motortrend.com/news/china...
www.mda.state.mn.us/first-aid... ammonia will extract water,that can chemically burn tissue.
www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/...
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Ammonia Engines
7:44 - State of Nutrients in Soil
11:11 - Eclipse Plans
11:47 - Scott Carney's Vortex
14:10 - Artificial Earth Rings
16:34 - Sponsor - 80,000 Hours - Věda a technologie
I work in a Freezing works (meat factory) and a few years ago we had a small leak, a Crack about the size of a pen. Within 10 minutes you could smell Ammonia over 2km away, and after over 5 hours of cleaning we were asked to go back to work where the smell was still potent enough to keep the alarms triggered. Not fun stuff to be around.
Respect. Be careful bud.
I work with industrial refrigeration specifically NH3, do you have detectors in your cold storage areas? Usually companies have them all over for insurance purposes. I'm surprised it was allowed to vent out to smell it from that distance away.
Been there. The smell really is rather unpleasant, huh.
I worked at a similar place. There was always a leak ... somewhere, let alone all the ones which existed but had frozen over themselves. Did always wonder if it really was cheap enough as a coolant to offset all the maintenance costs.
I bet nobody had sinus congestion...
God I love ammonia
I'm a truck driver. I spent a few months hauling ammonia, nasty stuff is under rating it. Using it as a daily driving fuel is insane. I was doing daily short haul trips. Load in the morning drive a couple of hundred miles deliver return empty (however only a tank without any valves is empty) . The amount of training before starting this job was extensive. PPE, dress up like an astronaut, working in a small fog as small leaks happen when conecting and disconnecting the pressurized lines. I was not allowed to conect or disconnect without having another person (also in ppe) very near by watching every move closely, in case I needed rescue. If I was moving pressurized cylinders, (the ones that look like welding tanks) I couldn't go in the trailer unless two people were at the dock watching, also in case I needed rescue. The thought of the need to refill a car with such a product. Especially if it has low mileage is far too many rolls of dice in my book. Knowing how may refuelling stations would be need and how many short cuts would be taken by your average station attendant. Union Carbide and Vopal comes to mind. Humans have a long history of chemical and chemical waste missmanagement. I fear we would be thining the herd. Edit for PS; also made in China.....
It makes the chance of high voltage arcs from a charging station look pretty mild, actually. If it hits a person, only that person (and whomever touches them) dies. If ammonia clouds go over, you might not die, but there's going to be a whole bunch of people in a much larger area that will be scarred for life with you.
I didn't even consider how the gas station employees would be handling the stuff. Cutting corners is a huge risk, yikes.
The first ammonia engine is going into a container ship. Do any of you think one of those is ever going to run on batteries? Or can you think of anything else to power the 60,000 cargo ships in the world?
@@tsubadaikhan6332 There was a time, where wind did this .. 🙂
But back then, not as many goods "needed" to be transferred. ... But sugessting to haul less material around the world would be ridiculous!
@@LoneStarr1979 But if bans come in on fossil fuel transport, this maybe shipping's only chance. they can have huge tanks, filled by professionals, and they never have high speed accidents. Ammonia may be their best option, rather than your car.
This is absolutely true... I work in Aerospace trying to solve green aviation. Earlier this year I was in a meeting with one of the big jet engine manufacturers that was to discuss running hydrogen in their jet engines. However, a couple of their top engineers were very passionately arguing that hydrogen was the wrong fuel. They argued ammonia was much better.
I was dumbfounded. I said "have you ever worked with high concentration ammonia?!?! I would rather bathe in jet fuel that stand within 20 feet of concentrated ammonia"
Those ammonia engineers are actually corporate spies, Cyberpunk style. My cousin is one of them.
This happens when people rely way too much on theory. In theory, ammonia does have a high energy density, so it is a good fuel. It's also stupidly poisonous and a pain to handle, something you only find out if you've handled ammonia, or have bothered to look up and read up on.
I have a farm and raise sheep; so whenever I have to clean their bedding, which is about every 3-4 months I know I'm in for a bad time cause of the ammonia in the lower levels of bedding due to sheep urine. It is usually just mild nausea, sometimes a headache, and one time in a small pen where I had lambs it was so bad I could only work for a couple minutes at a time before running for fresh air. It was like working in a pool of horseradish sauce, burning eyes and throat. And that stuff is very, very, very diluted compared to he real deal.
@@lemmypop1300 Could you wear a respirator, build a drain or clean the bedding more often?
@@kitefan1 I could wear a respirator mask, but I never plan ahead to actually buy one when I need it; plus it's kinda hard work and it gets clammy under mask so I don't know if I could stand wearing it for a few hours.
Now, a drain wouldn't really help cause the bedding soaks up their urine so it wouldn't run out anyway. You are probably wondering how the sheep don't mind it? It's because there's about an inch of top layer that dries quickly and forms a hard crust so the gasses don't come out until you remove it.
I could clean it more often, but it's a hard work that you just tend to procrastinate on until it's absolutely necessary. It would have been easier if I had a barn with a big door that I could enter with a tractor and a scoop, but I keep my sheep in an old pigsty and it works really well, until you need to clean it.
Anyway, I just wanted to illustrate how bad ammonia is even in minute doses, but here we are discussing my farming practices :)
Growing up, there was a train derailment near my house, and five railcars of anhydrous ammonia ruptured. The town was in a river valley, and since anhydrous ammonia is denser than normal air, the huge cloud of ammonia just covered the town for several hours. It was so thick that you literally couldn't see your hand in front of your face.
It happened in the middle of winter, so a lot of the ammonia was trapped by the snow. Since it was so close to our house, we had to live in a hotel for over three months while the contaminated soil was removed from the site. We were lucky enough to get away with only minor chemical burns - mostly in our eyes and mucous membranes.
😮😲 Yeah, there's a train that goes by our house like 4 or 5 times a day... literally 60 yards away. Scary stuff, thanks for sharing.
You're lucky to be alive.
Wow.
Wow. Normally that would kill everyone in the valley. :O
You're lucky you survived and had a place to go to. It's a pretty stark contrast to what happened to the people of East Palestine and Lahaina, the were left to fend for themselves. Did the government or railroad company pay for your hotel?
Little correction.
Ammonia is lighter than air. But... being compressed when leak decompress become cold combine with moisture in the air making a fog... that yes stay low for logger time.
So... in a dry day in summer all would have gone up in little time.
In wet/snowy winter... that is very bad situation.
Also to corrode Ammonia mostly need water so it get always first eyes and respiratory system when it combine with the moisture of the tissue to... transform it in a caustic solution... that keep burning for a while even after stop of exposure with the gas.
It's bad. Very bad.
just to add to the hydrogen storage point, leaks don't just happen near the seals. hydrogen, being relatively tiny af, has a funny habit of making its way through the super small gaps between the container's atoms.
Yeah, Hydrogen in pure concentrations is an enormous pain. Being the literal smallest, most simple, element really does give it a leg up at getting out of or through literally every last seal or container we've ever engineered.
I think the only way to maybe contain hydrogen would be to make a seal out of metallic hydrogen, which they really only make in the cores of planets LOL.
Yeap, goes right through low quality stainless that's too thin. You have to leak test.
If only it would actually just escape. Most of the time it just worms its way into the crystals and stays there like a little asshole, turning your nice tough steel tank into pressurized graham crackers. Hydrogen embrittlement is proof that the universe itself wants to see us fail.
I’m surprised hydrogen embrittlement isn’t talked about more often. Pressure cylinders in hydrogen fuel vehicles are going to become brittle over time, and the chances of rupture in a crash are going to go up and up.
I used to work with 50% ammonia , among other chemicals (i used to transfer from tank to drum). Even at 50% it is nasty stuff. The ammount of PPE needed was insane, but has saved me more then once.
Absolutely. The thing is, most modern engineers have no experience with high % ammonia.
However, if you are old enough to have been an engineer around blueprint machines, you remember the ammonia tank outside that was surrounded by a tall fence that made it very clear "don't mess around! This stuff will kill you!"
"Will kill you..." There is a reason fire departments in towns with ice rinks regularly practice for ammonia spills. It ain't for fun. Just ask the small towns that have had deaths from it.
Are you sure by wearing PPE that nobody was taking away your human rights and right to choose? 😅
@@CaptainBollocks....insert Tom Hardy “That’s bait” Meme.
@@CaptainBollocks.... Hell yeah I like to breath in ammonia unimpeded.
Farmer here for semantics: you don’t spray in anhydrous ammonia, you have to “knife” it in into the ground. Releasing it out of the dirt just turns to a gas and blows away. It does smell, I have been “burned” by it and also as a former pool boy I can say that breathing it is very similar to breathing chlorine gas. Literally flipped a tank of the stuff into a ditch once because farming safety is stuck in the 1800s and everything about pulling those tanks is a nightmare (I was going 20 mph pulling doubles and the rear one bounced on the shoulder).
Just wondering, aren't we in danger of running out of ammonia? It doesn't sounds very sustainable to me to burn that stuff in engines while we need it for farming and stuff.
I made once the mistake to smell on an open bottle of ammonia and I actually thought I was hurting my nasal cavity. This stuff ain't a joke...
I know that they use this stuff to bring you back when you have to stay awake for what ever reason and after I smelled it once I knew why they're using that stuff.
@@Spielername30% of people on earth or more owe their existence to the ammonia produced by the haber Bosch process
@@Spielernameit is not mined its manufactured
Urine is mostly ammonia. It’s NH4. Is it as dangerous as gasoline?
@@Spielername ammonia is NH3. I really doubt we'll run out of hydrogen before the sun does and the same is true for nitrogen, which is nearly 80% of our atmosphere. Methane and ammonia, two of the most common chemicals in the universe - right after hydrogen. It's also a feedstock in industry, literally used by the trainload.
In cdl school we had to watch a video of what happened when a truck carrying anhydrous ammonia spilled. It was... well you don't want to watch that video. Also at all the cold storage places I go to there are wind socks on the roof. So you can tell which way to run if there's a leak. It's scary stuff.
>wind socks so you can tell which way to run if there's a leak
Somehow that makes it sound 10x more terrifying
It was commonly used in schools in mimeograph machines, in commercial HVAC units that were water tower cooled and still in fairly common usage in commercial food processing centers, such as where they slaughter and cut up chickens.
Back in my firefighting days, we used to respond to ammonia leaks in the rural areas because we were the agency with BA gear, This meant we could get in close enough to shut down the valve and stop the leak, unfortunately,, ammonia is able to penetrate ordinary turnout gear where it instantly attacks the two areas of the body where you sweat the most, worst of all being the crotch. I invented several new dance steps during my career. 😢
Yep at the plant I worked (before I started there.)A couple of guys got hospitalised with second and third-degree burns in their crotch and armpits from exactly that - from that point it was mandated that every leak had to be dealt with with a full chemical suit and SCBA.
Rudolph Diesel invented an ammonia engine before the Diesel engine (and after he invented a table ice making machine). A few days before he announced the engine at a worlds fair, he shelved it, and instead perfected the compression ignition Diesel engine, which he demonstrated could run off renewable vegetable oil. Ahead of his time, totally forgotten.
No, he's not. If you do the techie thing and study engine cycles you get into those. Diesel has a whole engine cycle named after him. He just doesn't have the sort of popular media fan club Tesla has and Edison has.
What comes to my mind for a reason of less food nutrients is how fast we try to grow some produce. Packed in greenhouses and picked far before it's ripe just so it doesn't spoil on a truck before it hits your store. Same reason local food tends to taste better because it was picked closer to it's peak.
You americans could use some less energy dense food, so its a win for you guys
@@Makabert.Abylonhappy I'm not the only one thinking this. I live in a city that gets a lot of American tourists and working in hospitality myself I see and work with many. 9 out of 10 are obese.
@@Makabert.Abylon It's not the crude "energy" that is lacking, it's the vitamins and minerals.
@@Makabert.Abylonit doesnt reduce carbs at all just polyphenols, minerals, and vitamins
Was about to say the same as someone who used to farm. Soil hasn't degraded, farmers are very clued in when it comes to keeping soil quality, it's the speed of growth and increase in size of the product. A very large factor is the big chain supermarkets too, pushing down the price they are willing to pay for goods, pushing quality producers to export or sell to higher class customers who will actually pay for it. Want, fruit, veg or meat, go to a farmers market and avoid the big chain supermarkets.
The only really good thing about ammonia is that it is smellier than deadly or explosive. So you have a good chance of running away before the concentration gets too high, but depending on the type of leak, it may still be lethal.
It of course depends on you knowing where the source of the ammonia is and running away rather than towards it accidentally 😉
We're talking about highway speed vehicles here. You might not get a chance to run away.
Ammonia is very hard to ignite (far safer in that regard than hydrogen, LPG, petrol or diesel).
There should be a bag of acid in the ammonia tank that ruptures upon impact above 35 mph.
Thank you, Joe!
Ammonia is commonly used for industrial refrigeration because it is so cheap. I used to live up a ruralish highway from a fruit processing plant. It sprung a very small leak and they evacuated everyone at that level for a mile around. I think they left the folks significantly uphill alone. Not anything as bad as a train derailment and in a complex of buildings sitting still. No-one got hurt that I know of, not even the cows up the road a bit.
Fungal damage to crops is probably a huge factor since the mycelial networks of fungi transport nutrients and minerals to plants that they can't get otherwise. Without fungus, we don't have plants.
My wife ordered this book today after seeing this video. Thanks for bringing Scott Carney and his book onto your show.
When I saw the ammonia engine idea, I just assumed it was clickbait and not something any vehicle manufacturer would propose, since anyone with any experience with ammonia knows how dangerous it is. I have worked on large ammonia refrigeration systems, and while it is a very efficient refrigerant, it is very difficult to work with, and any leaks require evacuating site personnel. I would never consider driving around with a large tank of ammonia without a hazardous materials sticker on my vehicle.
Do you think it would be feasible to use ammonia heat pumps for heating public swimming pools?
I really liked the second story about nutrient devaluation in modern foods, because it made me feel good about myself.
You see, when I bought this house three years ago, the front yard was a mostly-sterile sand-pit where the only things that grew were goat-heads and bind-weeds -- and not too many of them.
(Why, yes. I did get this house for *really cheap* . How could you tell?)
So, the first thing I did was get help to pull every single weed. That sucked.
Then, I ordered two chip-drops.
The chip-drop program is something used by local arborists to dispose of the wood-chips from cleaning up dead trees, or those damaged by storms and such.
Normally, they'd have to truck the wood-chips to a local land-fill and pay a couple hundred bucks to dump them, there.
However, with the chip-drop program, a homeowner can ask that they dump the chips in a yard as chemical-free, undyed and untreated -- and therefore non-acidic -- mulch.
Some of us even toss in 20 bucks to help pay for the gasoline.
So, yeah. For about 40 bucks I got two truckloads of the best mulch available, and the arborist companies saved hundreds of dollars.
I then got some help and we spent a couple of weekends spreading that all over the front yard.
After that, we had to pull a weeds and water the plants we wanted to keep, but it made for a pretty light workload, that first year.
Then winter came and dumped a bunch of snow.
Now, Colorado is a semi-arid environment, and the piedmont area of the Colorado Front Range is one of the few areas with rivers and streams that constantly have water in them.
But, even here, the weather warms up within a few days of a storm, and the dry, cool air evaporates much of the precipitation before it can soak into the ground.
...Unless that ground is covered in, say, a thick layer of wood-chips. Which soak up that melting snow like a yard-sized sponge.
The next summer, I had to deal with *a lot* of weeds -- as well as flourishing wildflowers and flowering bushes from the seeds we'd planted the previous fall, after we finished with the chip-drops.
In the process of pulling up those weeds, we'd pull up clods of soil -- writhing with worms, night-crawlers, beetles and other bugs.
I'd gotten some wood-chunks with the chips, as well, and when I trimmed my trees I stacked the branches on the edge of the property next to some new elderberry bushes planted as hedges.
The spider population in the yard exploded. As did the ladybugs and other predator beetles that lay eggs in deadfall wood. Wasps burrowed into my chips and pulled out grubs, too.
You know what I *didn't* get?
House-flies. Gnats. Mosquitos.
None of those made it past my predator-rich yard as far as the house.
By the end of the summer of 2022, I also had puffball mushrooms popping up under the trees on the south side of the property, near the elderberry bushes.
Did I mention the woodchips weren't treated? That means nobody ever sprayed them with *fungicides* .
This past spring proved ungawdly wet, in Colorado, and the weeds went nuts again, so I called for another chip-drop.
That came in early summer -- a summer that stayed wetter than usual.
By late summer, I had two different types of mushrooms flourishing in my yard (puffballs and little blue dudes); the bushes were all going nuts, and the weeds were (kinda-sorta) back under control.
Anywhere you dug in my yards revealed a network of white fungus fibers, tons of writhing worms, and rich black soil from the decaying woodchips dropped two and a half years ago.
The wildflowers went crazy, the pumpkins my sister planted in my front yard grew like mad, and I had to trim my hackberry tree *twice* , because the branches kept creeping into the timbers of the pergola I put up in place of the rusty metal porch roof that was falling apart.
So, yeah. Pollinator gardening with a dash of permaculture principles has its challenges -- finding people to help keep the weeds under control is right up there -- but my yard was one of the most colorful in the neighborhood, and one of the richest in life of all sorts (had a skunk visit late last year, but he moved along before he stank up the place, and squirrels stop by, regularly) all summer long.
And during the recent snowstorm, I saw birds pecking at the seeds on the sunflower plants that grew up wild, there, this past summer.
I do need to rein in the decorative clumps of pampas grass, but that'll wait until spring and, hopefully, I'll have sold the place by then.
i appreciate everything about this!
@@bsidegirl9069 It's a different sort of lawn care and it's not work I find particularly satisfying, in and of itself. Lots of people like gardening for it's own sake, but I'm not one of them.
I did it this way because it made the most sense to me, and once we get the weeds beaten back the yard pretty much takes care of itself.
But I sure as heck *cannot* argue with the results. If I have that many predator insects and arachnids, them I have a very happy yard, all 'round.
I just have to keep the pesticide people the hell off my property. They show up once a month, starting in the spring, and offer to spray my yard for bugs.
"No, you may not *ever* spray my property under *any* circumstances!"
Now that's what I call a win-win scenario. I'll keep this in mind for the 63 years it would take for me to afford a home…
On the state of nutrients in the soil, or just the overall health of the soil..... I went through the Master Gardener program which is sponsored and run by the U.S.D.A. and for me WSU (Washington State University) This was in the mid 1980's and the experts were talking about soil depletion back then. Large corporate farms are the worst, they don't care. Smaller family farms DO care what they are leaving to their grandchildren.
In other news, Toyota's houseware's and personal products division is introducing a new uranium powered personal massager. It's the death of battery powered personal massagers, and the people using them, but what a way to go!
Built in heat pad!
@@rogerstarkey5390 Comes with 2 heat settings: radioactive burns and "oh god I'm melting"
Ammonia is nasty stuff. When I was little, my brother tricked me into smelling a bottle of ammonia. It's so wonder I'm still alive. I was breathing, but I could tell I wasn't getting any oxygen. Just a cool sensation in my lungs. The ammonia managed to dissipate out of my lungs before I passed out, but it sure was horrifying. You have to waft it if you want to smell it.
I had something similar, except it was in middle school. Our teacher wanted us to see how different cemicals smelled... 💀
HERITAGE SEEDS: for at least 20 years I’ve read articles that grown food has less nutrients and it’s not so much dealing with soil as it’s actually the seeds. A great article showed a modern seed planted beside a seed from 80 years ago and although the vegetable looked the same supposedly they tasted very different and modern seed vegetable had little nutrients.
There is a documentary that shows the seeds and also showed how modern dogs are 40% to 60% have less bone mass and it’s due to less nutrients.
Re: 80,000 hours. I started in my career in 1979, at the tender age of 16. I helped realize the "computer revolution" and shortly after the "Internet revolution". I was, for the most part, a very fulfilling career. Filed 11 patents during my time. Was involved in Internet technical standards in the IETF, ITU, and IEEE. Chaired working groups. Managed working group chairs. Helped invent technologies, and wrote a crap-tonne of software and technical documents. It started to turn into "just a job" after Nortel collapsed, and the corporate grind became much more apparent to me. I semi-retired in 2017, and have a "second career" running a not-for profit that provides educational support in astrophysics, of all things. Many perfectly talented and intelligent people will go their whole lives without really having a fulfilling career. I'm so grateful to have had one, and now a 2nd one in my "retirement".
I love your video Joe, and always try to time my thumbs up to my favorite part of the video. Great stuff in this week's video but hearing the pet collar jingle at 2:18 got this week's like.
My eighth grade science teacher had gotten exposed somehow to anhydrous ammonia as a kid. It destroyed his tear ducts and fucked up his nose. He couldn't smell much and had to constantly use eye drops.
At least Toyota finally has exactly 1 EV. It's so strange that they are so resistant.
Those who resist new tech are bound to be forgotten. Ex kodak.
It's especially weird since they messed with EV's in the 90's but never made a production model. Just a handful of test vehicles.
They know that it’s gау
Blame mr. Akio Toyoda, who, as a car enthusiast, firmly believes EV to be fundamentally boring., and his tenure as Toyota's CEO. (like he didn't get the memo that Toyotas are known to be boring and it's ok...)
Pretty silly if you ask me. Theres no way someone hasn’t presented to the board of directors how much money they’d make in the long run. Dont know what’s up with that. The startup costs are insignificant compared to what they’d make even just after a few years.
Office worker here... I'll have you know I was NOT late for the meeting. :) Love your videos, Joe!
A family member of mine does safety inspections of facilities for shipping fuel and volatile cargo storage. A few months ago he mentioned to me that a lot was changing because the shipping companies were switching to ammonia on a massive scale. From what I understood, this is not 'future stuff' but it's already happening across the industry.
6:45 - I dunno, a liquid Ammonia spill at sea sounds pretty like it wouldn't be nice.
It actually is almost completely harmless at sea, because there's so much water there to dilute it. The only long-term effect is that it acts as a fertilizer for algae and counteracts (!) ocean acidification.
Thank you, Joe. We can make this world a better place, in so many ways. Your videos go a long way
creep
Dad grew up in Manhattan in the twenties and early thirties. He remembered that they had refrigerators that used Amonia as a refrigerant. He said when one sprung a leak it had been known to kill the occupants. Nasty stuff
"...some hung over office worker who's late for a meeting." STOP STALKING ME JOE!
I once read a writeup by a guy who used to work in a facility that used lots of anhydrous ammonia. The plant had a system of horn blasts to signal different things - like, one blast meant break time, two meant clock out time, three meant something else, four meant caution, prepare to evacuate, etc. But seven blasts meant basically "Something has gone terribly wrong. Don't bother running, there's no time. Just call your family and tell them you love them." This shit is so dangerous that facilities that work with the stuff literally have to have a protocol set in place for "You're all going to dye, just spend whatever time with your loved ones that you can". Just the thought of working in such a place sends shivers down my spine.
And some people really want to make this the fuel of the future.
That kind of signal would be a terrible idea. If I ever heard 7 horn blasts knowing this, I would most likely panic and do my best to escape and survive, there would be chaos everywhere.
Also 7 horn blasts to say "you're dead" seems kinda long. By the time the 7th horn blasts you ears would have already melted from the chemicals in the air a long time ago.
@@texanplayer7651maybe you should go back and fix it
@@texanplayer7651 You don't know what you're talking about. Whether or not there would be chaos is kind of irrelevant - the people hearing it are already dead. The horn blasts are there to let them know to contact their families. Panic if you want, it would make no difference. And it's not like a disaster like this happens all at once. Chemical plants are huge, and there would likely be a few minutes between the horn going off and death. It takes a lot more than ten seconds for a wave of ammonia to engulf a plant. The reason it's seven horn blasts, is because it obviously couldn't be just one horn blast, because then every time people went on break, everybody would have a small heart attack. And even if they are dead by the time they hear the horns, well - they're dead, so it doesn't all that much matter.
a large plant would have it broken into sections and would lock down as such, sounds like your buddy just worked on a site with poor practices@@ErikratKhandnalie
Love this format joe
Appreciate all you do
I'm an HVAC contractor and in the industry we use Ammonia in industrial applications. That shit is dangerous. There have been incidents where workers haven't had the time to evacuate a room before dieing from it. That was my immediate thought when I heard about this.
Don't think I've ever been this early, keep up the great work! Love your videos cause you discuss a pretty vast array of topics!
When I was small, my dad worked at an ethanol plant. While there, there was a freak accident where a pipe started to burst while he was making rounds, and it turns out it was a pipe of anhydrous ammonia. He was burned all across his back and side, all second to third degree burns, and it took months and months and months for him to recover fully from that.
I would like to chime in on the subject of crops being less nutritious...
Certainly targeting maximum crop yield is one aspect, but if the soil replenishment were to include sufficient source minreals and the building blocks for more complex nutrients, then you could maintain healthy soil. That is not what big factory farms do (please correct me if I am wrong), they use fertilizers to imbue the soil with nitrogen but do not sow reduced iron or calicium or or minerals into the soil. I would bet that these things (1) cost money to put back into the sol, (2) do not make that much difference in the volume of crop output, so the farmers are disincentivized to do that.
I think that the regenerative argiculture could really help with all of this, but how do you get a corporate factory farm onboard with that?
By strict regulations
Just like with organic foods that struggled for years, those of us that cold afford them, bought them. Now they are part of the mainstream.
Because I can afford it, I buy from small farmers. My fruits, veggies and meats. As it gets more widespread it forces the big corps to follow. Change starts at the bottom..😊
One thing I had heard regarding the nutrients in food was that it was also partly because of the American obsession with 'big' produce. We've selectively bread for the largest tomatoes, watermellons, carrots, etc... without regard for the nutrition content of that produce.
Same in Australia. Crops seem to be selected more for their speed of growth too. Big and juicy, but relatively low on flavour and nutrients.
As a Romanian-born 1st generation US immigrant who would go back every summer as a child, the food always tasted so much better...although in recent years I've been pleasantly surprised by the trends here (towards more locally grown and raised items, expanding farmers' markets, etc.) and disappointed to learn that the quality back home is no longer a guarantee either -- with less scrupulous vendors importing cheaper produce from abroad and trying to undercut local producers with inferior goods
Brilliant as always. !!👏. Ps got my name spot on in the shout outs 🤙. That trip too Ireland has served you well 🇮🇪🤙 sèamas
I appreciate that there are some companies not going the EV route. While I personally think EVs are the most obvious end-goal, it's entirely possible that there are some avenues that we haven't pursued.
The "best" solution has to survive in a sea of "less than best" solutions. The math sucks.
But when I look at the alternate avenues companies are actually pursuing, it seems there isn't any real good alternative. Or nobody had the idea so far.
@@KaiHenningsen I am very concerned about what happens when we relatively soon use up all the rare earth minerals needed for such huge batteries. Hybrids are the best solution with today's battery tech, in my opinon.
The power grid in the US is not capable of dealing with all EV America, it's a stupid idea to try and force everyone to buy one when it's not practical. Maybe in 20 or 30 years
It's massively irritating to see startups wasting their tech investments into blatantly horrible misapplications though. Electrification is the objectively proven future of drivetrain tech on consumer vehicles. Power sources are yet to be decided, but electric motors just absolutely drag their nuts all over the competition's faces in every single important performance category. Toyota is shooting themselves in the foot by using this kind of side-grade tech as an excuse to avoid investing development into electrified drivetrains.
Good job Joe, you didn't go into it very deep, but what you covered in such a short time was well done. I have heard people like Tyson going on about how good modern farming practices are for us and the environment. his field of expertise is astrophysics. You showed just some of the reasons why this isn't so. 👍
*AS AN AUTHOR* I totally sympathise - my lst book totally bombed - everyone said it was my best book, bla bla bla and it jsut DID NOT SELL.
And then last week out of nowhere I started getting sales, I dont know if someone reviewed it or what...??? 18 months of my LIFE lol
Just picked up Scott Carney's book on Audible. Can't wait to hear this story
Tomatoes have been bred so that farmers can harvest them when they are green and hard as a rock so they can be transported in a controlled atmosphere (nitrogen) without any damage or ripening until they get to the store. They weren't bred for flavor or nutrition. There was zero concern for that when they were bred. That is why the tomatoes today (except heirloom) have no flavor and are far less nutritious. Corporations decided what matters.
Ammonia as fuel. I looked into this about a year ago, and came to more or less the same conclusions you did. I understand quite a few ships, very much like the big container vessel you showed, have already converted to using ammonia as fuel. I haven't heard anything, but I presume if it didn't work they would have converted right back, and I haven't heard anything about that.
Low power output per cubic capacity ~ I understand that is the case with a small petrol type engine (two litres let's say.) On the scale of a 200 ton diesel in a ship, I'm not sure it works quite that way.
The advantage ~ hydrogen is nasty stuff to store and transport. So is Ammonia, but we use it in industry now, and we have the handling facilities and the experience to manufacture it (the green hydrogen v brown hydrogen v blue hydrogen aside) so... I don't expect to buy my next motorcycle and find it runs on ammonia, but maybe it got shipped from Japan to Australia on a vessel that ran on ammonia. That would help with the carbon dioxide problem, because shipping does account for 1 or 2% or something of the carbon problem.
Ammonia is a good way to store and transport hydrogen ...
Ammonia might be safer for a well run cargo ship than for your average road driver. You are surrounded by ocean so maybe you can pump water into a sealed section of the ship to dilute the ammonia if there is a problem. Ships don't seem to crash as often as your average US driver. Not sure about the statistics elsewhere. Might even be less dangerous for local sea creatures if there is a fuel leak compared to petroleum. If it vaporizes up. Horrific for crew in the wrong place.
I wish you would come to Britain so I have the chance to meet you. I'm such a fan, every week I cant wait to see my Joe Scott video. love ya Joe
I reremember the fun we had when one of us accidentally knocked over a bottle of ammonia when I was a child. The spill lost about a coke can's worth of the stuff, but ths spill was on concrete - cue everyone going indoors and the concrete needing a hose down. It stank for the rest of the day.
Love you Joe!
0:19 - "Toyota will literally do anything to not make an EV". Bang on. This is right up there with their Hydrogen powered V8.
2023 Toyota bZ4X/Subaru Solterra
I grew up in Houston. In 1976, a tanker truck full of anhydrous ammonia crashed off a freeway interchange and fell onto the freeway below, rupturing and sending thousands of gallons of this ammonia into the air. Hundreds were injured and a number of people died from inhaling the ammonia. My family lived in the area but still several miles from the crash site, and we could smell the ammonia and everyone in our part of town was told to remain indoors with the windows and doors closed for a number of hours.
Every weekend, we drove to my grandmother’s house on the freeway where the crash happened. Every bit of vegetation in like a half-mile radius around the epicenter of the crash was dead - grass, trees, shrubs, everything, just brown and dried out. It was kind of amazing to see just how effectively a cloud of anhydrous ammonia could kill EVERYTHING. It was like this for months, too, until the area finally started to have greenery again.
The idea of all the cars on the road driving around with tanks full of anhydrous ammonia is terrifying to me. If you think those chemical burns on your skin are bad, imagine having them in your mouth, throat, sinuses, and lungs. No thank you. If your car is leaking gasoline, you want to avoid sparks and flames. If your car is leaking ammonia, you want to avoid breathing…kind of a different thing…
Fun fact; through a combination of Dallas suffering from immense amounts of sprawl, and the details of how the eclipse path works, folks on the side of Dallas closest to the centerline of totality will have an eclipse nearly a minute longer than those on the far side of Dallas.
I disagree with both extreme reactions. I don’t think this will replace EVs but I do think this technology if matured could have an important role to play in long term global emission reduction. EVs are not a panacea. Scaling and maintaining battery production at the levels needed to meaningfully replace ICE at the scales required is fraught with environmental and economic risks and other challenges. It’s a dirty business and it’s not certain that it can be done sustainably. What’s more a practical EV capable of long haul trucking has yet to be demonstrated which is a major gap that could perhaps be filled by this technology.
I saw that ammonia was used as the refrigerant in the first commercial refrigerators, and i think it's still used industrially today, because it's a great refrigerant. But they quickly realized that they couldn't put it into people's houses because it's so toxic and dangerous, so they created things like Freon to use in consumer products instead.
Lots of RV fridges uses ammonia. Any fridge that can run on ng or propane does.
Freon was invented to replace propane in fridges not ammonia.
After Freon was banned were went back to propane but with encapsulated compressors the leakage problem has been “contained”.
@@allangibson8494 Actually, both ammonia and propane were among the refrigerants in early fridges that were replaced by CFCs such as Freon.
@@itsROMPERS... Ammonia absorption fridges based on Albert Einstein’s patent are rather common still.
The more efficient ammonia compressor domestic fridges had largely been replaced by propane ones when Thomas Midgley got involved - leakages from propane fridges were levelling houses.
@@allangibson8494 Ammonia is not used in home refrigerators, only in commercial or industrial applications.
Nobody today has an ammonia fridge in their kitchen.
What i said was true, why you trying to make it seem like I'm wrong?
Another great video! Thank you for what you do!
Thorough research once again.
I almost always learn something new here, and never spotted any mistake.
As far as the "carbon dioxide food argument", how about we say this. Plants, in general, needs to have a happier medium. Essentially, their own goldilock zone. They do not need too little, but you can say we are more likely given them too much.
I worked "security" (brainless wandering bodies) at a food factory a couple of decades back where ammonia was the coolant used. Nasty stuff, thankfully the worst of it I had to deal with during my time was the smell, which is somehow less appetizing than the slop processed food is, before final cooking.
that’s hilarious lol!
The other consideration.... If you could "smell" it, you were "breathing" it.
Maybe in low concentration, but those molecules were entering your respiratory system.
@@rogerstarkey5390 Yea, we had masks for the worst leaks. Afaik (and it wasn't mentioned here), it's not too harmful to breathe in, at low quantities. It travels far, so can smell it without being close to the actual source.
Yea, I saw cyclone bowler arrive, I was sitting on my deck facing west, watching the lightning strikes. At its peak, I counted 1 strike per half a second, the peak only lasted 10 seconds, and then eased off in frequency. It peaked while over the tasman sea, and wasn't very strong when it hit Auckland. Kinda surprised to hear there was any damage at all.
Great video but the "Google's been following you around" bit in the ad read was pretty damn funny
My in law's house was about 5km from a fertiliser factory and ammonia leaks were common. Especially in the monsoon the air used to be a fog of ammonia. Burned the nose, throat and lungs. Coincidentally a lot of cancer patients in the area. Fortunately the plant was shut down some years ago.
"Make an EV or draw 10"
*Toyota:*
"Bro, did your car piss in your car? it effin stinks."
"I don't have a cat"
Regarding the nutrients adding flavour to foods, this is also true for drinks such as beer and cider too! This is a major part of the reason why beer famously changes taste when production moves to a new country, meaning although in most cases it would be cheaper to set up a brewery in a new country, brewers would prefer to export it to reduce the change in flavour.
anhydrous ammonia is also a watched chemical by the dea because Its used in methamphetamine production via the birch reduction. you need a a legitimate company or license to buy it.
It would have been cool to describe HOW the ammonia engines work.
Same as traditional ICE: burn fuel, make piston move, translate into rotation
Agreed. Imagine making a video about electric cars that only talked about the explosive nature of lithium.
The kind of video that a lot of people need to see. As we are transitioning to different types of fuel sources I'd like to know if I'm going to be riding around in something that will dissolve me into a puddle or not.
Works just like gasoline, but will hurt a hell of a lot more if you accidentally get it on your skin (or you get in a wreck and the tank ruptures!)
@@MysteriousSignal i would rather take chances with ammonia than fuel due to the fire.
6:40 ah yes, sailors. Historically known to never be hung over. 😂
Hey Joe, about the eclipse.....I feel your pain. About 20+ years ago I was camping outside of Balmoral, Ont which is 40 km from anything. There was 0 light pollution and it was supposed to be the most spectacular luna eclipse for the next 40 years. It was warm with next to no wind and we were sitting at a campfire. Overcast!
AI content farms says every engine is the end of EVs. I avoid them like the plague.
"Toyota will literally do anything to not make an EV"
INTRODUCING THE NEW TOYOTA HORSE
In the 70s I was a real Toyota Fan and plenty of people made fun of me for driving a rice burner. And now plenty are making fun of my Tesla, who says history dosnt repete itself : )
And by using confusing marketing to fool people into thinking "self-charging" hybrids magically produce energy out of thin air - they just need topping up with petrol now and again 😋
I agree with Toyota that EV's suck.
@@DFSJR1203
You'll be walking
The transition to the advertisement at the end kinda hit me because I just watched a video about Steve Irwin and his legacy carrying on.
6:40 “Trained professionals and not some hung over office worker”. You ever even met a sailor? 😂😂 🍻
Hey Joe Scott, have you ever considered branching out into the mystical arts for a fun twist? How about a special episode where you do tarot card readings and palm readings for your audience? It could be a hilarious and engaging way to 'predict' our fortunes - with that classic Joe Scott spin, of course! #FortuneTellingWithJoe"
He’s well on his way.
Anything but fully electric - seems to be toyota's approach x)
Inability to admit they're wrong....?
they have an ev though....
Could you imagine just peeing into a gass can and it just works as fuel. Like that would be THE SHIZ
OMG Joe is gonna reach 2 mil subs soon enough!! Holy shit, such a long way already, that's awesome
On ammonia engines; it had been said that the push for hydrogen vehicles and fuel cells in the early 2000s was chiefly an effort to fracture public attention after some early EV successes - a convenient tactic for the fossil fuel industry to punt "the way of the future" at least a couple of decades ahead. Maybe touting ammonia is a similar tactic.
Undoubtedly
Ammonia sloves many of the problems with hydrogen. Having liquid carry energy for the transportation network would take pressure off of batteries. A mixed approach is more likely to succeed to get us off of fossil fuels.
@@theatheistpaladin except ammonia is produced with fossil fuel so the extra steps are just waste
Why are these 3 comments 1 day old when it says it was posted a couple of minutes ago 😭😭
May be because of different timezones.
There is always one of you chuckleheads commenting this.
Its released early for patreon.
@@craigh5236 chuckleheads. and that's the only explanation I thought of but I thought it was released on the patreon platform. Makes sense for it to just be early access to the CZcams video for analytics
@@craigh5236who you calling chucklehead.. chucklehead.
Channel members get early access
Amazing video, as always.
I don’t see why the exhaust systems for ammonia combustion engines couldn’t be designed to catalyze the production of N2 rather than free Nitrogen; not unlike systems used on some diesel engines today.
Electric Vehicles: Exist
Toyota: "Ya know what, we should build vehicles powered by "
Toyota Fanbois: " iS tHe fUtUrE!!!!!11!!"
.... While not mentioning that a vehicle powered by an "" converted to "electricity", running an electric motor is an "EV".
.
Then we have the fact that these systems are in fact just an energy store, aka a "battery".... Just an extremely inefficient version.
I don’t think Toyota fanbois said that about EVs back when Toyota launched an EV back mid 2022 and it doesn’t appear they are saying that about Ammonia now, at least in the comments.
Well, Toyota seems to be waiting for batteries to not be a achilles heel for the car. Not a bad idea.
Exactly. I drive a 2003 camry and it's like a tank. I do preventative maintenance and never had an issue with it even at 250k miles. My roommate drives a 2014 prius and regularly has battery issues that total in the $ thousands. I think hybrids are a happy medium right now, but even then, they have their very expensive battery issues. I will hold off on upgrading because I think driving an older, existing car is still better for the environment than creating demand for a newly produced car full of e-waste and expensive repairs.
Yeah not a bad ideal like picking that pic for your profile? I guess you like Walking to and from work.
In what way are they the Achilles heel?
.
They allow the vehicle to outrange the driver.
.
Help the car outperform the equivalent ICE.
.
Have price parity (if you buy the correct brand)
.
Ubiquitous charging (same brand.... Soon coming to others)
.
Have a long standard warranty, and by the end of that warranty the replacement will be *cheap* .... IF required.
.😊
Savings in energy and service during the warranty period will more than pay for replacement (for smart owners).
.
I've been learning and studying permaculture and food forest application for my home garden. It looks like the wild has taken over but the nutrients are dense and only water and compost are needed.
Interesting that you mention the lack of flavour in American food vs other countries. I have maintained for years that the food in the States is very bland compared to what we get in Canada, Mexico and especially Europe. I guess it's all in what you are used to but still, it's nice to know I wasn't wrong.
Toyota sees our gimmick of packing batteries into everything and calling it green, and wants to do some actual engineering lol
Yeah except this is a stupid idea. They’d make so much money if they just embraced EVs and the research progressing (fast) there
Spot on!!@@wolfiemuse
Can you do a video on Dimethyl Ether (DME)?
It stores like propane, and can be used a such (although a bit less energy dense) *BUT* it also can make a great diesel fuel.
Also has potential as a “Hydrogen Carrier” and/or for Fuel Cell use (i have a paper on that somewhere)
There is some form of it called OMEx which is liquid at STP if i remember correctly but I haven’t read up enough on that yet, and the Technology Readiness Level is rather low if I understand correctly.
DME is already on the market though! “Oberon Fuels” is available in some parts of the USA, and SE Asia is using DME (although often as a form of more portable/usable coal, but interesting nonetheless)
4:21 Clip is of an over-the-top liquid spray rig whereas anhydrous ammonia is injected (applied about 8-10 inches sub-surface) into the soil and any visible white vapor means improper application.
Rest of the U.S.: "So I won't have to pump my own gas anymore?"
Me, living in NJ: "So... ammonia huh?"
I bought vortex on audible, make sure you get your kickback Joe. :-) great video as always
I live in a town in Alaska that processes millions of pounds of fish each year. All of the processing facilities have ammonia leak indicators, and large areas around the buildings must evacuate if there's a leak. The biggest point of nutrient deficiency is because many foods are larger. My understanding is many of these foods have half the nutrients, but are twice the size
I worked at a food packaging plant that used Ammonia coolant. My job was to drain excess oil from the lines at different locations. I would rather deal with anything instead of ammonia!
I had to do a doubletake with that rebuttal to "more co2 means more plant growth" segment. It was simply rewording the same pro-co2 argument but claiming that it's bad for plants to grow and make food.
Me: pauses and opens google...types "anh.."
Google: did you mean anydrous ammonia burn?
Google: are you sure you want to see this?
Me: scheduling therapy sooner
As soon as I saw the thumbnail, my mind went wild with the amount of accidents and people getting hurt…..dying.
As someone who has applied pressurized anhydrous ammonia on farm fields as a teenager, I can say with certainty that a very very small amount of ammonia will clear up your sinuses instantaneously. That would be useful if it were not for the fact that you lungs rapidly want to stop breathing at the same time.
You only have to do that once before you go to great lengths to only open the valve after the chisels are in the ground and the valve is turned off before the chisels come out of the ground.
*Loss of nutrients in crops* - I would suggest thinking about our extensive use of landfills, which basically is locking away significant amounts of minerals / nutrients that otherwise would have recycled back into the ecosystem, thus our garbage disposal is leading to a net negative return for molecular compounds needed to facilitate the continued renewal of flora and fauna?
Yes! Please PLEASE do a live stream of the eclipse! I'm in Phoenix, AZ area and believe it's about 80% totality here. Not sure if I've ever seen a true eclipse, so it would be cool for you to a do a live stream! Great video, Thanks 🙏💞👍
As I found out, overcast may actually be a great way to view a solar eclipse. The last eclipse a month or two ago was no full and I live in BC on the "wet coast". It was cloudy on that day but driving in the right direction we noticed what looked like a crescent moon except much brighter.... and sharper. I could have watch some live youtube thing to see it but seeing it live, even slightly obscured was a wonderful experience. I guess it does depend on _how_ overcast, overcast is ;)
As someone who has worked with ammonia at a hardening factory before, I can say that you would absolutely not want to fuel your car up with ammonia in the same way you fuel up with gasoline. The fumes will knock you out and then you'll just drop a running hose of ammonia on the pavement and fall into it. Not good
I remember hearing a radio show back around '02 or so who had a guest on. I cannot for the life of me remember the name but, this person was talking about an engine tech they were trying to get funding for. It was adapting existing ICE engines by replacing fuel with .....wait for it....chlorine and the spark plugs with HID ultraviolet lights. The biproducts were water and hydrochloric acid. Water goes out the pipe but the acid is captured via a system and neutralized. Plus, this person said that the amount of acid was very small and that the engine oil present on all moving parts was enough to neutralize most of it anyway. The chlorine was said to be a very energetic reaction and most engines could easily be adapted to it and would make a little more power than running fuel.
Has anyone ever heard of this? I go Internet searching now and then but simply can NOT find any references to this. I'm not one for conspiracy crap but it's enough to almost make me a believer in the big oil gobbling up patents for new stuff theory.