Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer
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Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer
#2In other news, wind mills have been used to produce lots of other things that require electricity.
Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer
#3[deleted]
Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer
#4This sentence really bugged me:
> A Minnesotan wind turbine shows that wind energy can produce more than just electricity.
No, it doesn't. It's just that electricity can be used to do lots of things, including splitting water as an input to ammonia production.
What this article shows is that nearly all of the potential "shortages" in materials on earth are really just energy shortages (with some small number of notable exceptions like helium), and the reason electrification is so important is because it allows faster replacement of fossil-fuel generation with carbon-free sources.
Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer
#5A loop where solar is converted to fertiliser using similar process , probably generating hydrogen as a side effect with some mechanism to probably capture some carbon for economically useful use when it reaches say an LCOE of 0.01 $/kwh and done on mind boggling scale might actually be the holy grail solution to a lot of problems at the same time. Might need quite a few breakthroughs in the material science scheme of things though. There are good reasons why hydrogen has never really taken off by itself even with so much scale, innovation thrown at it so far. The best hope is China doing to hydrogen now what it did to solar in 2010s.
Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer
#6Once wind and solar is routinely overproducing what the grid and grid storage can consume, lots of things like this start to become economic. Also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas to help manage seasonal fluctuations in demand (e.g. windless winter nights) since gas is cheap to store for long periods.
It's even possible to synthesize airline fuel this way - https://syntholene.com/
Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer
#7In other news, wind mills have been used to produce lots of other things that require electricity.
As well as tons of other things without electricity involved at all! Don Quixote was never in fear of being electrocuted.
In other news, no whales were bothered by this windmill, either.
Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer
#8This is one of the "unavoidable" uses of clean hydrogen, in the Clean Hydrogen Ladder.
At the other end of the spectrum ("uncompetitive") you get things like fuel-cell cars.
https://liebreich.com/the-clean-hydrogen-ladder-now-updated-...
Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer
#9I would prefer to have figures how this compares to the traditional Haber-Bosch-process, how much energy is put into this, and how much fertilizer do we get for it, if it's just a PoC without evaluation of how much energy is used. in this whole process we got nothing NB: to beat Haber-Bosch you don't need much. it isn't only about the produced carbon dioxide
Re: Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon "green ammonia" fertilizer
#10This sentence really bugged me: > A Minnesotan wind turbine shows that wind energy can produce more than just electricity. No, it doesn't. It's just that electricity can be used to do lots of things, including splitting water as an input to ammonia production. What this article shows is that nearly all of the potential "shortages" in materials on earth are really just energy shortages (with some small number of notab…
Right. It also makes it sound like they’re not using the Haber Bosch process… but then:
> Electrolyzers are located on-site. They use wind energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gas.
> Additionally, nitrogen gas is directly harnessed from the atmosphere using an air-separation unit.
> Hydrogen and nitrogen are combined under pressure, resulting in carbon-free ammonia fertilizer.
That sounds a lot like the Haber Bosch process to me. So they’re just saying, rather than divert excess generation to a battery, you could instead build a micro H-B plant on site to produce ammonia.
I doubt this makes any sense in the grand scheme of things as you achieve major efficiencies at scale for chemical plants. Makes more sense to just electrify existing ammonia plants and ensure they use renewable electricity sources.
The green chemistry industry is full of penny-wise pound-foolish concepts like this and it drives me absolutely nuts.