South Korea on Tuesday unveiled its first vehicle partly fueled by ammonia, an alternative to fossil fuel that produces no greenhouse gases.

The vehicle, developed by the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER), uses a mixture of ammonia and gasoline that is 70 percent ammonia, which reduces the car’s emissions of carbon dioxide by up to 70 percent, according to the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning.

Ammonia is a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen, which produces only the two materials and no greenhouse gases when combusted.

Developers from KIER also said the car may be a better option than other clean-energy vehicles, such as a fuel-cell electric vehicle, which also produces no greenhouse gas emissions, as ammonia is much more stable than other liquid fuel.

Also, ammonia can be used to fuel any conventional vehicle with only a few modifications to the vehicle’s existing system.

If the technology was applied to only 20 percent of all vehicles in the country, it would cut the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by over 10 million tons, or 15 percent of the total, per year, they said.

The only existing difficulty is the relatively high price of ammonia, KIER noted, but said its developers were already coming up with ways to produce ammonia through faster and cheaper means. (Yonhap News)