The Oil Drum: Ammonia and Biofuels?

One of Dave’s essays that caught my attention involved the very interesting idea of using excess wind power to make methanol, ethanol, or even ammonium nitrate fertilizer. But Dave doesn’t just throw an idea out there; he gets into the important technical details. I first mentioned Dave’s paper in my essay on Compressed Air Energy Storage.

Dave explains in the following essay how we could use renewable energy to make nitrogen fertilizer, thus taking some of the fossil fuel inputs out of biofuels production. By doing so, the energy return would be substantially improved, which is one thing that must happen before biofuels can be truly sustainable…
Much more after the jump to The Oil Drum.