New ammonia production process: generates electricity instead of consuming
1–10 of 20 posts
Re: New ammonia production process: generates electricity instead of consuming
#2ATP is required to make the reaction happen. My suspicion is that it's energy net-negative. Sure you make some electricity but how much does it cost to make ATP? Probably more than you get out in electricity. Not that there's a fast and easy way to turn electricity into ATP. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/46ax8r/can_elec...
Re: New ammonia production process: generates electricity instead of consuming
#3ATP is required to make the reaction happen. My suspicion is that it's energy net-negative. Sure you make some electricity but how much does it cost to make ATP? Probably more than you get out in electricity. Not that there's a fast and easy way to turn electricity into ATP. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/46ax8r/can_elec...
Theoretically, ATP could be harvested from plants or bacteria. They could also be modified to produce the ammonia directly via this reaction. That wouldn't actually reduce the energy cost, but it could reduce the economic cost by making it logistically easier to produce. Maybe instead of making ammonia in complicated chemical plants, we could "grow" it on farms.
Re: New ammonia production process: generates electricity instead of consuming
#4ATP is required to make the reaction happen. My suspicion is that it's energy net-negative. Sure you make some electricity but how much does it cost to make ATP? Probably more than you get out in electricity. Not that there's a fast and easy way to turn electricity into ATP. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/46ax8r/can_elec...
Theoretically, ATP could be harvested from plants or bacteria. They could also be modified to produce the ammonia directly via this reaction. That wouldn't actually reduce the energy cost, but it could reduce the economic cost by making it logistically easier to produce. Maybe instead of making ammonia in complicated chemical plants, we could "grow" it on farms.
I mean, sure, you can do that. But it's kind of silly. "Grow" ammonia feedstock on farms to then turn into fertilizer to use at the farm to grow food?
Maybe you should just plant legumes instead and let them fix the nitrogen straight into the soil where you want to grow food. It's not sexy since it's 19th century technology (or older) but it works. And it requires very little in the way of logistics or infrastructure meaning that it's resilient.
Re: New ammonia production process: generates electricity instead of consuming
#5ATP is required to make the reaction happen. My suspicion is that it's energy net-negative. Sure you make some electricity but how much does it cost to make ATP? Probably more than you get out in electricity. Not that there's a fast and easy way to turn electricity into ATP. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/46ax8r/can_elec...
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Re: New ammonia production process: generates electricity instead of consuming
#6ATP is required to make the reaction happen. My suspicion is that it's energy net-negative. Sure you make some electricity but how much does it cost to make ATP? Probably more than you get out in electricity. Not that there's a fast and easy way to turn electricity into ATP. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/46ax8r/can_elec...
Theoretically, ATP could be harvested from plants or bacteria. They could also be modified to produce the ammonia directly via this reaction. That wouldn't actually reduce the energy cost, but it could reduce the economic cost by making it logistically easier to produce. Maybe instead of making ammonia in complicated chemical plants, we could "grow" it on farms.
IIRC, ATP is a short lived energy carrier in cells. Instead of harvesting it from cells, it's probably easier to turn that around and use the existing ATP mechanism in cells to generate ammonia.
Re: New ammonia production process: generates electricity instead of consuming
#7ATP is required to make the reaction happen. My suspicion is that it's energy net-negative. Sure you make some electricity but how much does it cost to make ATP? Probably more than you get out in electricity. Not that there's a fast and easy way to turn electricity into ATP. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/46ax8r/can_elec...
Of course it is energy net negative. There is an energy cost to reducing nitrogen to ammonia. Enzymes aren't magic and nothing changes the energy cost equation of the products vs the reagants.
Re: New ammonia production process: generates electricity instead of consuming
#8ATP is required to make the reaction happen. My suspicion is that it's energy net-negative. Sure you make some electricity but how much does it cost to make ATP? Probably more than you get out in electricity. Not that there's a fast and easy way to turn electricity into ATP. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/46ax8r/can_elec...
Of course it is energy net negative. There is an energy cost to reducing nitrogen to ammonia. Enzymes aren't magic and nothing changes the energy cost equation of the products vs the reagants.
Of course it is not an energy negative. The production of ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen gas is an exothermic process. At room temperature it's even a spontaneous process.
The reason we need these complicated processes is the massive activation energy of the reaction, making it extremely slow uncatalyzed.
These are professional chemists, publishing in a serious journal. Did you really think they didn't take into account the basic energy balance of their equation?
Re: New ammonia production process: generates electricity instead of consuming
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course it is energy net negative. There is an energy cost to reducing nitrogen to ammonia. Enzymes aren't magic and nothing changes the energy cost equation of the products vs the reagants.
Of course it is not an energy negative. The production of ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen gas is an exothermic process. At room temperature it's even a spontaneous process. The reason we need these complicated processes is the massive activation energy of the reaction, making it extremely slow uncatalyzed. These are professional chemists, publishing in a serious journal. Did you really think they didn't take into…
Not sure where you get a pure hydrogen source on this planet without using some energy. I'd like to own such a source. Sort of like owning an oil well.
Re: New ammonia production process: generates electricity instead of consuming
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course it is not an energy negative. The production of ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen gas is an exothermic process. At room temperature it's even a spontaneous process. The reason we need these complicated processes is the massive activation energy of the reaction, making it extremely slow uncatalyzed. These are professional chemists, publishing in a serious journal. Did you really think they didn't take into…
Not sure where you get a pure hydrogen source on this planet without using some energy. I'd like to own such a source. Sort of like owning an oil well.
That's moving the goalposts. The point of this is to reduce the energy cost of making ammonia, assuming you already have hydrogen gas available.
The article is not purporting to have conceived of a new energy source, only to have found a way to recuperate some of the cost of making ammonia, by extracting some energy from a step that ought to be a net energy producer.