Hacker Remix

Device uses wind to create ammonia out of air

140 points by rbanffy 2 days ago | 110 comments

dizzant 1 day ago

The comments here are focused on how much energy it would take to turn this into fuel. The real story here is decentralized fertilizer production, buried at the end of the article:

> this innovation could fundamentally reshape fertilizer manufacturing by providing a more sustainable, cost-effective alternative to centralized production

The high energy cost of Haber-Bosch, plus the additional cost of transportation from manufacturer to farmer could potentially be eliminated by distributed, passive fertilizer generators scattered around in the fields.

I'm no expert, but assuming sufficient local production, low concentration could potentially be overcome by continuous fertilization with irrigation throughout the growing season.

Let's find out. Some quick fiddling with a molarity calculator and an almanac:

-- 100 uM ammonia -> 1.7 mg / L ammonia

-- 82% nitrogen -> 1.4 mg / L nitrogen

-- My lawn needs around 1 lb / 1000 sq ft, or around 5 g / m2

-- So my lawn needs about 3500 L / m2 of fertilized irrigation total for the season

-- Ballpark farming irrigation is around 0.2 inches per day, or around 5L/m2

I would need to water my lawn about 700 days in the year, or more realistically up my irrigation rate by about a factor of 4, AND source all of the water from the fertilizer box.

I'm a little skeptical that I can allocate space for enough production and still have a lawn left to fertilize. The tech probably isn't ready for the big time on an industrial farm yet, but for research demo, this seems like a promising direction! Much more than concentrating it for fuel.

cogman10 1 day ago

Interesting idea.

So, farms are definitely setup already to accomplish this. Most farms have moved to central pivots for irrigation, and they already inject fertilizer into the pivot [1]. If fertilization could be generated onsite, then you could theoretically have everything plumbed together to "just work" without much intervention or shipping of chemicals.

[1] https://www.farmprogress.com/farming-equipment/chemical-fert...

bluGill 1 day ago

Rain will wash nitrogen away (down to streams, rivers, and then the ocean creating lots of problems) so you want to apply nitrogen with an eye on when it will rain so your fertilizer stays on the field where you want it. Your link doesn't specify what fertilizer is being applied, I would guess nitrogen is not one.

Ammonia should be applied to the soil - in the air it is a hazard that can kill people and harm the plants (farmers wear lots of protective gear when working with ammonia, with more other things they don't bother).

As such I'm not convinced that is the right answer. You want a system that will apply nitrogen

cogman10 1 day ago

> I would guess nitrogen is not one.

It's the main fertilizer applied.

Here's another site talking about common problems with this technique (from a farmer's perspective). [1]

[1] https://www.valleyirrigation.com/blog/valley-blog/2022/06/13...

Suppafly 12 hours ago

Farmers use anhydrous ammonia that bounds with water in the soil and then bonds to the soil.

I don't know that farmers wear anything special when applying it, but there are safety procedures. I work with a farmer and he was telling me about one time he forgot to switch one of the valves off and when he disconnected a hose, the fumes knocked him out. Luckily it was just the fumes from the hose and not the whole tank or he likely would have died instead of just being knocked out.

spookie 1 day ago

Farmers already do keep an eye when it will rain before applying fertilisers. So, this is already part of their calculation. Although, yes , this means they will not apply it everyday. Depending on their location this means that a lot of weeks are out of the picture.

trollbridge 1 day ago

A somewhat passive fertiliser generator scattered around your fields is also known as a "cow" and a "chicken".

wcoenen 1 day ago

Cows and chickens cannot fix nitrogen from the air. They eat the nitrogen-fixing plants. So in a sense they don't "generate" fertiliser, they only concentrate it.

dredmorbius 12 hours ago

And distribute it across acreage.

SoftTalker 1 day ago

Of course you can't have cows wandering through your corn or soybeans, they'll eat and/or crush it. But if you had fields that you could rotate between pasture and planted that could work.

darth_avocado 1 day ago

Until big fertilizer lobbies to make decentralized fertilizer illegal. Insert national security, wrong hands blah blah

gopalv 1 day ago

> Insert national security, wrong hands blah blah

That isn't a big reach.

Ammonium nitrate is already controlled in several parts of the world

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFO

themaninthedark 1 day ago

ANFO is explosives made with ammonium nitrate(Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil), however ammonium nitrate is by itself rather energetic and will explode when store improperly. The most recent memorable incident would be 2020 Beirut: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion

Imagine one of these units left somewhere, slowly filling a tank that has not been sealed, water evaporating back out leaving a nice ammonium nitrate powder behind....

bot403 1 day ago

I'm no chemist so someone will have to explain to me how ammonia sitting around by itself, without water, just becomes ammonium nitrate.

aaron695 1 day ago

[dead]

cogman10 1 day ago

NGL, it would be an easy sell. You are just a hop/skip and a quack away from turning that decentralized fertilizer into a decentralized bomb making system.

dizzant 1 day ago

A hop, skip, quack, jump, and fairly obvious high-energy distillation process away. The national security angle probably isn't a concern here for the same reason that this process doesn't produce good fuel.

darksaints 1 day ago

Ammonium nitrate is made from ammonia and nitric acid (which is also made from ammonia). Therefore, ammonia is the only necessary direct precursor to ammonium nitrate, which is probably the most relevant oxidizer in improvised explosives today.

Not saying that it should be regulated on the basis of national security, but it’s not like there isn’t a potential security concern.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 1 day ago

[flagged]

dylan604 1 day ago

What happens when your decentralized fertilizer mixes with someone's copyrighted/trademarked fertilizer? Do you have to pay them their dues?

If you think this is outlandish, you must not be familiar with Monsanto

bluGill 1 day ago

That is an exaggeration. The only time Monsanto did anything was cases of intentional mixing.

9rx 1 day ago

> you must not be familiar with Monsanto

It has been out of business for almost seven years now. Who is putting any energy into remembering them at this point?

jfengel 1 day ago

It's not out of business. It merged with Bayer. It's a change in ownership, and to some degree a change in upper management, but large swathes of the company are unchanged.

9rx 22 hours ago

Its assets were sold to Bayer and BASF and some former Monsanto workers may have begun working at those other businesses, that is true. That kind of scenario is true of all businesses that close down, though, at least unless they truly have no remaining assets to sell or workers wanting new jobs, both of which are unlikely for anything beyond the simplest of sole proprietorships. By your logic, there is almost no business in history that has ever gone out of business.

blueflow 1 day ago

I mean, the extended headline suggests it is producing fuel, which is wrong.

darksaints 1 day ago

Ammonia has a lot of uses, and fuel is one of them.

gus_massa 16 hours ago

It's a recent use. I'm still not convinced it's a good use case. I think it's mostly greenwashig (bluewashing?) to avoid the explicit release of CO2, but probably biodiesel is a more ecological friendly alternative.

seemaze 2 days ago

The article mentions "Traditional methods for ammonia production require high temperatures and pressures" in reference to the existing Haber-Bosch process for producing NH3 from thin air, an interesting historic story on its own.

https://blog.rootsofprogress.org/turning-air-into-bread

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/73464/the-alchemy-o...

lancewiggs 1 day ago

https://www.liquium.nz/ is working on reducing the energy (a lot) required for the Haber-Bosch process.

trestacos 1 day ago

+1 "alchemy of air" is a great read. The angle that would be most interesting to the HN crowd is that it exposed me to how much innovation was happening in chemistry in this pre-WWI era. Reminds me a bit of silicon valley.

The also a fascinating look at how the inventors got heavily caught up in WWI and WWII due to being in Germany and how tied up their industry became with government. Interesting to reflect on in current times.

Truly a great book.

darksaints 1 day ago

Are these really catalysts in the traditional definition of the word? Meaning that the catalyst is non-sacrificial? This appears to be suggesting that nitration can be done with atomospheric N2 simply with the right catalyst. But N2 is triple bonded, and the lowest theoretical threshold to react N2 with anything is by breaking at least one of those bonds, which is incredibly energy intensive even under theoretically optimal conditions.

Some of the most promising research in replacing Haber-Bosch is actually plasma-assisted nitration, which is basically just as energy intensive as Haber-Bosch, but with drastically lower capital requirements...something that could be done in your backyard. I struggle to see how an ATP catalyst-only method could even do anything close to breaking an N2 triple bond.

littlestymaar 1 day ago

Idk but soil micro-organisms do break N2 to make ammonia so there sure exists a pathway that just implies catalysis at low temperature.

hnmullany 1 day ago

Soil nitrate fixation is also energy intensive. The nitrogenase enzyme takes about 27 ATPs to break a single N2 bond. Legumes feed about a third of their entire photosynthesis output to their nitrogen fixing nodules in order to generate significant amounts of nitrates.

There is no free lunch.

chrisbrandow 2 days ago

Assuming the energy input is atmospheric warmth, then the real question is what volume of ammonia can you produce with this device per acre? Then how does that amount of captured energy compare with wind/solar in the same area?

Otherwise, you’re just better off, producing electricity from one of those sources, or producing ammonia, using electricity from one of those sources, after accounting for losses in the various processes of course.

smaudet 1 day ago

Sibling commenters mention industrial uses, sustainability means far more than just cars or electricity, part of why the focus on electric/cars is so short-sighted (never mind the issues electricity distribution brings to the table)...

But for cars/electricity, this is potentially excellent news (assuming longevity and cost of the operating equipment). The distribution costs are much lower than Hydrogen, and it could be used easily to power existing Hydrogen fleets. I'd wager this even makes electricity distribution easier, as ammonia batteries could be relatively stable and easily distributed as well.

bluGill 1 day ago

Ammonia is far to dangerous for cars. Household cleaning ammonia concentrate is 99% water. That is concentrate, you dilute it for use (generally 16:1), and it is still nasty stuff. No car with enough ammonia to use it for energy will be allowed in a tunnel. To work on a car that uses this for fuel will require extreme protective gear - a chemical breathing mask, and protective clothing covering the entire body. Working on machines in such gear is not easy.

smaudet 1 day ago

True, although this is a Red Herring of an argument.

Ammonia batteries does not mean "Ammonia Cars", I never said it did nor meant it should.

They are, however, excellent in areas that likely already required a hazmat suit (generators, substations, hydrogen fuel pumps, fertilizer factories, etc.)

magic_smoke_ee 23 hours ago

1/3 the energy density of diesel and way more dangerous to lives and property.

smaudet 10 hours ago

Some quick research suggest, though, that the production of biodiesel is far more intensive (algae/oil farms are needed, then a process of procurement, production), and not without its own environmental concerns.

dexwiz 2 days ago

Ammonia is very common in industrial applications.

tomrod 1 day ago

True. Commonality of ammonia references ammonia demand whereas grandparent comment was referencing the supply capacity per acre.