41–50 of 103 posts
I 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
This 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…
> 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) You're saying freshwater shortage is really just an energy shortage?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Hab…
From doing a bit of digging into this myself after hearing it being promoted on the radio, I both agree and disagree. Working through the $/acre for on-site produced ammonia using locally-generated electricity (I forget if I was looking at PV or Wind, doesn’t matter) the payback period was surprisingly quick, like 2 or 3 years. One of the big reasons is that you don’t actually need a very big system; you only need on…
It’s usually a lot cheaper and safer to condense all that demand into a purpose-built facility where they can hire an engineer to look after all the generation, have centralized container storage, backup parts, etc.
None of that prevents putting the panels or windmills on farmer land, though. You could imagine some sort of “get a discount on ammonia if we can put a solar panel in your field” scheme. Or, even more simply, put up your own panels, sell the power back to the grid, use that money to buy fertilizer from the factory buying your power off the grid.
> This process is extremely heat-intensive and accounts for up to 2% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. > While it is highly unsustainable, it has doubled the Earth’s food-carrying capacity and still feeds almost 50% of the population. 2% greenhouse gas emissions to feed 50% population is unsustainable? What? > The key is to create synthetic ammonia fertilizer by combining atmospheric nitrogen with natural gas…
Eventually you cook everybody and the population drops to 0. We want to maintain the "feed everybody" aspect while eliminating the "continually add excess carbon to the atmosphere and render the planet uninhabitable" aspect.
> This process is extremely heat-intensive and accounts for up to 2% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. > While it is highly unsustainable, it has doubled the Earth’s food-carrying capacity and still feeds almost 50% of the population. 2% greenhouse gas emissions to feed 50% population is unsustainable? What? > The key is to create synthetic ammonia fertilizer by combining atmospheric nitrogen with natural gas…
Haber-Bosch require continuous input of hydrogen, but aside from that it is a net source of power. The reaction is exothermic and can provide more than enough work to drive compressors that pressurize the reactants.
From "Brawndo Plasma Thermos Makes What Plants Crave [video]" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48793495 about hot plasma treatment turning water into fertilizer;
> [Magnesium-doped geotextile water bags yield Struvite fertilizer (at lower cost but with Pb contamination risk)]
I work with a company that produces ammonia from local waste streams. The current policies and war has really hurt farmers. Certain fertilizers and other inputs have more than doubled in price, if they can even be found anymore.
Of course it's never that simple. If the war ends tomorrow and fertilizer prices drop back to normal over the course of the next two years an expansion could find itself uncompetitive just as its coming online.
the talk about "electricity can do things" misses whats actually interesting here. Working in the energy sector, the hard problem is rarely generating the power, it is getting it into the grid. connection queue runs for years and turbines regularly get curtailed when the grid c anncot absorb more. A flexible load behind the meter, like an electrolyzer making ammonia on site, monetizes energy that would otherwise be w…
Nearly every sentence has a bold-face phrase. There are no paragraphs, only sentences. It is borderline incoherent and very off-putting.
That style article needs to eliminated. Surely there is a better information source for this site and process than this online rag.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Hab…
Not to mention ammonia isn't the friendliest of chemicals and doesn't exactly beg for decentralized logistics. I think, projects like these grew out of dunkelflaute moral panic regarding renewable energy. Meanwhile grid battery storage has becomes cheap enough to completely obliterate this concern. And quite frankly, fertilizer needs in agriculture should be addressed by ecological means anyway. If we want to lower t…
Although there are many sunny countries where solar + one or two days of battery storage are probably enough for the full year.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if carbon was a complete non-issue, electrification and a greater diversity of energy sources would still have immense value.
Electrification is a no-go when electricity prices keep going up up up.
Utilities are pooling the wool over the eyes of PUCs and the media is not doing what it needs to show how the utilities are screwing customers because the media is illiterate...
But what China and other places (eg Spain) for this sort of ammonia is to place generation and batteries right at the ammonia site, bypassing the grid for most of their energy, dramatically lowering costs.
The grid costs more than electricity generation, and utilities get guaranteed profit on grid costs, so they try to make the grid as expensive as possible, even as renewables and storage are lowering the cost of generation.