Yes, I agree with you about the dangerous of NH3 as fuel!!* Safety:💀 Hope they realize what will happen when accidents occur !!! ua-cam.com/video/KT-3WZ-23Ac/v-deo.html In old ammonia car we need to raise awareness of leaking as well!! More over is about Global warming:🌍 I don't think ammonia combustion engine vehicles 🚗,🚤,✈ type is a good IDEA!!Burning NH3 can cause NxO and NO gas, (However for power plant with NxO gasses scrubber system might be OK, If they prepare air filter Gas mask as emergency PPE incase of leaking!!) The NxO gasses such as Nitrous oxide can cause more global warming than CO2 300 time and live upto 144 years!! both NH3 and NO gas are toxic, especially when accidents occur.
BTW: Aged urine was a source of ammonia for cleaning wool after it was woven. That job was what a "fuller" did for a living. They poured fermented urine in a big tub, put in the wool and hopped in to stomp it with their feet. The stomping and ammonia got the lanolin out of the wool making it soft and fluffy to be nice and warm.
I eat so many vegetables that any piece of ground that I pee on instantly turns into like a green patch... Real talk I think it must be nitrogen or something.
Worth a mention that ammonia is easy to transport as it becomes a liquid at achievable temperature and pressure. I'm old enough to remember ladies carrying "smelling salts" to revive others that had fainted. :) Sure in high concentrations not good but it has a smell that's impossible to ignore. It's also highly soluble in water so a leak is fairly easy to deal with.
I remember in the mid 00s, when I was 16 or so, my best friend got her hands on smelling salts. Still dunno where she got it, same girl came home with an entire canister of laughing gas one time. But yeah- that is absolutely a smell you NEVER forget.
@Miss Spaz It’s pretty easy to but cartridges of laughing gas (nitrous oxide) as it’s used in whipped cream. It’s legal to buy for the purpose of making whipped cream, but it’s not like they make sure that’s what you’re using it for. Many head shops sell packages of whipped cream cartridges.
Ammonia products ARE actually used for foodstuffs. Ammonia salts are commonly used in liqourice known as Salmiak. Also ammonium carbonates are used as baking powder for certain recipes.
I can confirm this. We have an old family recipe for sugar cookies that uses hartshorn or ammonium carbonate as the leavening agent. They have a distinct tasty flavor when baked and, if you put the cookies in an airtight container before they're iced it smells like ammonia when you open the container.
One huge point in favor of the Haber Bosch Process is just how cheap the required catalyst is - it's mostly based on iron, containing small amounts of other cheap metal oxides as promoters. If a successor process to Haber Bosch wants to have any chance at viability it must have a catalyst superior in price to performance. To add insult to injury even if a catalyst of superior qualities is available - the Haber Bosch Process scales exceptionally well on an industrial level. For the time being it is my opinion that the most realistic chance to advance the nitrogen fixation is to "clean up" the classic Haber Bosch Process, mostly by addressing the steam reforming process that is currently the main source of hydrogen, but unfortunately that is another deep chemical rabbit hole in its own right.
@@OsamaBingChilling the amount of hydrogen needed, and the amount of power required are insane. Unfortunately there is a lot more to it than rigging up a Dozend wind / solar generators next to an ammonia plant and sticking some electrodes in the faucet.
The major reason why this isnt used today is because its very slow and operating costs are high. Think of it like this: the Haber-Bosch method is driving your car, this method right now is like driving your car on gold and the top speed is 1 mile per hour. Before we can drive down the costs its useless, because costs is often very well correlated with Co2 emissions. So right now the process is like driving a car with a top speed of 1 mile an hour and it spews out so much Co2 cars looks clean.
Yeah, initially I misread this though. Haber-Bosch with red hydrogen & process heat is basically my vision of the future, if such a future is ever achieved before we go extinct. Planes would definitely benefit from liquid hydrogen though.
@@ChemEDan Liquid hydrogen 😂 If even space companies do everything possible to not use liquid hydrogen for rockets, why would airplane companies do the same?
@@themonkeyspaw7359 For the same reason space companies supposedly feel like they're forced to - LH2 has the best specific impulse. Planes benefit in many ways that rockets can't. For example, solid oxide fuel cells have the same power density as gas turbines but almost twice the efficiency. Rockets are pretty much stuck with rocket engines as their powerplants. Also LH2 planes could reach higher altitudes than hydrocarbon planes, so they would enjoy lower drag. Rockets spend most of their time above the atmosphere so it's not a valid comparison. Side effects of having cryogenic liquids available - chilled magnet cores (higher magnetic fields before they get saturated) and superconducting wires (no need for heat rejection) make transformers and motors extremely compact. And air can be precooled if you're compressing it. It gets even better with scaling, which has been the trend anyway for some time now. It's not difficult to imagine a plane with several thousand passengers slowly lumbering through the sky. They'd probably have more people than most of the towns they fly over. #flyoverstate
The band *Sabaton* has written a song called *'Father'* dedicated to *Fritz Haber* , contemplating his historic significance and controversy because he is know as the *"Father of artifical fertilizers"* , thus saving maybe millions from famine and starvation but he is also the *"Father of chemical warfare"* because he was the main proponent of the deployment of poisonous gases on the battlefields in WW1. Check out the song and the videoclip: *Sabaton, Father*
@@Sniperboy5551 i suggest you to discover their music. Not my favourite band either, but they have some nice story telling, and they are incredible on stage.
Plants use protein nitogenase that has a molecule FeMoCo which stands for iron molybdenum cofactor which can reduce nitrogen gas to ammonia. The chemical mechanism is fascinating.
And by "plants" you mean Cyanobacteria, surely? Nitrogenase are destroyed by oxygen, which plants both produce, and need to breath, which is why they rely on symbiotic bacteria to fix nitrogen for them. Fun fact: some plants have a hemoglobin analogue (Leghemoglobin) that makes their roots "bleed" red, and is believed to be an oxygen quench to keep the nitrogen fixing bacteria happy and anoxic. (And thus their nitrogenase working properly.)
The nitrogen fixing bacteria themselves are sourced with some oxygen as the symbiotic organisms are aerobic. The leghemonoglobin only faciliates a level oxygen supply so the nitrogenase is protected. Some leguminous plants can utilize the nitrogenase to convert N_2 to ammonia(NH_3), with the ntirogenase enzyme complex facilitated by ATP binding.
@@jackkrell4238 "Some leguminous plants can utilize the nitrogenase..." Could I get a citation for that? If it's true I really want to read that paper.
Hmm, actually this sounds like the Red Hydrogen systems Japan is trying to scale up to commercial levels could produce Ammonia with just an few extra steps. Red Hydrogen involves using a gas cooled high temperature reactor to provide super high temperatures to power a process to split off hydrogen from water, so just take that red hydrogen and add an extra layer to use the heat from that same reactor to bond it with nitrogen.
You can do the same with two electrodes submerged in water, plugged to a power source @ 12V DC. The electric current will split water into H2 and O2 (electrolysis). You pump out hydrogen out of the system, into a high temperature reactor from one side, and you pump in N2 from the other side to make NH3 inside the reactor. I just don't get where you're coming from with your '' Red hydrogen ''. That's the first time I ever hear about it. Metallic hydrogen ? Yes. Red hydrogen ? Never.
hydrogen is assigned a color based on how it is produced. It’s a hydrogen economy quirk. No real reason behind some colors. Hydrogen is colorless. White = natural Red/Pink/Purple = nuclear Green/Yellow = renewable Blue = fossil fuel + carbon capture Grey = natural gas (vast majority) Brown/Black = coal
@@azmanabdula There are a lot of different colors assigned to Hydrogen based on how it's made. Red Hydrogen it's made via a thermal process with the heat provided by nuclear power.
@@marcwebb1415 I honestly don't know. However I used to be an assistant at a facility that was trying to scale up electrical production from hydrogen fuel cells to power something "larger than a car". They had been working on it for decades before I came on. It wasn't going to work and the project was eventually shelved. In this case the larger the electron exchange membrane, the less efficient it worked. There were diminishing returns that scaled exponentially with the surface area of the membrane to the point where you would actually start losing power production. From a power production standpoint you are better off running multiple fuel cells in parallel than running a large fuel cell. But when you are trying to design a hydrogen fuel cell powered electric aircraft, the weight of multiple cells is a no go. Now what little I do know about ENRR is that it's basically electrolysis with extra steps. It's the exact opposite process to hydrogen fuel cell power generation. More to the point though, I wasn't saying that ENRR can't be scaled up, I'm saying that maybe the problems they are experiencing with trying to scale it up might be because it can't be scaled. Some things just can't be scaled, at least not with our current understanding of physics.
@@kensmith5694 Ammonia is still used in commercial and domestic refrigeration. Caravan gas fridges use ammonia as the refrigerant. Propane is more common in compressor systems now.
Yes, if we eat more beans the problem is less. Bean fix nitrogen. Rice and corn need nitrogen. Mix them together with some spices and you have a tasty dinner.
You can also intercrop, as in plant them at the exact same time. Since the legumes will not compete as much for nitrogen, most other plants will do just fine. This is the same idea behind the Three Sisters method indigenous farmers use.
Hank, you better be telling your kids all your Dad jokes! Especially the science jokes. I hope, because you have a fun delivery, that your kids enjoy all the science you bring to them! We really need a lot of STEM - motivated kids with a liberal dousing of the Arts. And your kids are in that next up and coming generation we'll need to help push forward.
For anyone who may wonder, all of these things are very easy to figure out in theory. Not complex really at all. The hard part is getting them to the realistic level.
Hey scishow. Have you looked at doing an episode on custom metabolism microbes? It's a newer field In biotech where many many new genes are added to microbes to enhance the efficiency of photosynthesis. And then use the extra available energy to say break down plastics in the environment into the oil they came from or into water and insoluble carbon. The insoluble carbon is left behind in the microbes body and a huge farm of these guys could be used to generate clean drinking water and graphite from plastic trash.
Interesting, but in order to be seriously done, it has to be cheaper as well. The best option currently on the horizon is to stick with HB process and get the high temperatures from nuclear power. Current reactors run about 300C and are at high pressure. Newer Gen IV reactors are designed to run at ~700C and low pressure which is more than enough to come up with the heat, pressure (and electric power) needed to make NH3. Using direct heat from reactors is more efficient as it saves a conversion step, and the reactors can be made small, such as the SMRs discussed today. See "MSR" (Molten Salt Reactor) for more info. Thorium can also be used for even greater fuel efficiency.
Ammonia _can_ create solutions. It can be solved in water, which btw. can produce a nice fountain in an Erlenmeyer flask, but it is also used as nonaqueous solvent, for example for sodium.
Couldn't they harvest ammonia from human waste using an enzyme? Oops, the answer is sort of, but it's still ineffective. "Direct stripping of ammonia (NH3) from urine with no chemical addition achieved only 12% total nitrogen recovery at hydraulic retention times comparable with the EC systems. Our results demonstrate that ammonia can be extracted via electrochemical means at reasonable energy inputs of approximately 12 kWh kg(-1) N"
Anybody old enough to remember diaper pails knows that urine can very quickly turn to ammonia. About a millennium ago and sooner people used to pee into barrels that were used to make ammonia for cleaning houses and other purposes. Why can’t we deal with a way to collect urine to create ammonia? Would reduce waste in water and be meeting a need.
what about genetically modified nitrogen fixing soil bacteria to replace nitrogen fertilizer? I'm pretty sure I heard there is a company trialling nitrogen fixing bacteria with the self regulating gene turned off so they continue fixing nitrogen even when the soil concentration is high. After some quick googling, the company is called Pivot Bio. It seems like a much better alternative than just a diffrent process for making amoinia.
It's a scale problem. Bioreactors are a pain to scale and it would be weird to see their genetic modifications last long if they tried to get it into the wild population. It will be very hard to outcompete the easily scaled HB process. My guess is the company goal is to eat into the HB process market like a lot of green energy is eating into oil and gas, rather than a full replacement of the process.
@@Virtuous_Rogue Bioreactors may have an advantage if they take in sunlight as the energy source. It would not be small in footprint but it may take a lot less energy input. In a world where the cost of energy is the cost of everything, it may work out to be a good idea.
@@kensmith5694 The main cost issue with bioreactors is you have to supply nutrients to the bacteria (very expensive and probably a custom mix) and have very tight controls on things like pH. It's very hard to keep a big container at uniform conditions when stirring it too hard will kill your bacteria so scaling usually involves adding more units which adds more complexity. If energy prices really skyrocket it could become viable.
Power all of it by renewable resources and source the H2 directly from hydrolysis and the Haber-Bosch process becomes attractive again. To account for the gap in intermittent renewable energy, you use a combined cycle NH3-H2 dual fuel turbine (optimizing the mix yields greater energy output as well as minimizes NOx emissions). If the N2 air separation, hydrolysis (& H2 compression/storage), and Haber-Bosch processes are all done relatively close by to each other, then only pipelines need be used rather than waste more unnecessary energy on transport. +Bonus points if you repurpose a LNG pipeline to carry the ammonia to the final point of use. ++Double bonus if you ship it across the globe on a vessel retrofitted to run on NH3-H2 dual fuel where the H2 is obtained by ammonia cracking using the waste heat of the engine.
I'm surprised you didn't mention one of the key reasons this pairs better with green tech than Haber: Intermittency. The high pressures and temperatures associated with traditional ammonia production mean that it is expensive to start and stop. If you switched all hydrocarbons out for green electricity you would need a large energy storage facility to keep power consistent. Low temperature low pressure processes can start and stop near instantly, meaning you could run it powered by solar during the day and not at night, removing the need for energy storage. It could actually talk to the grid and help to manage power levels, replacing other power infrastructure.
I too, have wondered… How do make it? Edit: In regards to water based electrolyte inefficiencies at large scale ENRR procedure, could such issues also be addressed by amplifying the flow of current introduced to the water-nitrogen mixture? i.e. Would advances in thorium fueled nuclear reactors, and other endeavors in advanced electrical generation, produce output that would be sufficient for such processes using available technologies applied in the described apparatus?
@@MadScientist267 I don't know, I think climate change and the prospect of mass starvation if we find ourselves without good ways of generating ammonia are pretty big problems.
Cat pee. Cat pee is full of ammonia. Just separate the ammonia from the rest of the pee. I discovered that one of my cats had been going in the corner of the laundry room while I was ill, once. I poured some bleach on the puddle and got a lovely poisonous foam, which I let sit for a bit.
Yeah, but how do you get cats to pee *on command*? Sure, they’ll pee everywhere you DON’T want them to, but have you ever seen a cat do anything you DO want them to? I mean, except by accident, which is when they look at you like “I totally meant to do that, you puny human.” 😂
Not to take the joke too seriously, but as cats are obligate carnivores, the cost of producing that ammonia would be exceptionally high due to the carbon footprint of livestock farming. A good way to make use of it though is to get a biodegradable clumping litter, and then use the clumps as fertilizer. It also helps scare away rodent pests in your garden.
If this works for ammonia, maybe it'd also work for just plain old H2 gas, too. Right now all of the ways we produce molecular hydrogen are pretty nasty, pollution-wise. Run this method off of solar-power or wind-power and you'd have a totally green way of generating both ammonia and hydrogen gas (just leave out the part where you combine it with nitrogen and you've got hydrogen gas).
8 Billions. We have about 2 or 3 billion more in us until we naturally start to level out Unless technology changes for the better...or climate change changes for the worse...
5:00 i think you mean "energy vector" rather than "energy source", we still need to produce the energy for the reaction to create it, but yeah, it's easier to store and transport than hydrogen, and could be useful to convert extra wind/solar power during production peaks for this kind of usage.
Is the fork in the opener with the cake slice, a specific kind of fork for a specific purpose? Looks very strange with its asymmetric relief on the tines!
Pretty sure it’s just a modern salad/dessert fork. They often have that little swoop on one edge to help with cutting some things. But you are right, that the pattern of the cut outs to create the tines is very unusual and asymmetric!
This is real, not just research. You can buy a unit, it shows up in a seacan and they drop it on your farm, it makes 4 tonnes a day, you plug in green energy and water and attach a tank for the ammonia. There are several companies making ammonia from green electricity (electrolysis), air and water. Generally, they say making liquid ammonia is about 70% energy efficient to make ammonia liquid. To put that in perspective, making hydrogen is usually about 75% efficient but then cooling hydrogen to liquid uses another 30% of the energy. This means ammonia has a huge efficiency advantage for green fuel applications. Oh, another cool thing about this ammonia tech is it can handle variable power inputs. If it is a super cloudy day and the power going into the system is lower the production is lower BUT you still have production. Allowing green energy to be decoupled from a grid really changes the financial considerations.
5:00 small mistake: "Ammonia could become an alternative source of energy". If it requires energy in the first place to make it, it's not called an energy source, but an energetic vector. It helps store and/ or transport energy. It's like electricity: it can transport energy but electricity it not an energy SOURCE because you can't harvest it or extract it from the ground. It's like hydrogen as well because (at least for most of it) doesn't come out of a well and energy used to make it is bigger than energy collected once "using" it.
Hang on. N2 needs x amount of energy to be broken apart. Why would one method be so much better at it than the other? They ought to be using roughly the same amount to break down the Nitrogen. Is the Haber-Bosch method really THAT inefficient?
It's more about the issue of hydrogen creation than necessarily about the combination with nitrogen. The issues presented in this story is because each side of the membrane need to be in liquid solution in order for the ions to pass. It does however cut down on the need for the haber Bosch process's need to be at high pressure, which is energy intensive.
Ammonia could actually be one of the solutions to long term storage and transport when it comes to renewable energy sources. You've mentioned in other videos that a challenge for renewables like solar and wind is how to store the energy until it's needed, which is a problem that fossil fuels do not have since the chemical energy is already stored up in the fuel itself. If we used the excess energy from green sources to produce ammonia, that ammonia could be transported more safely and efficiency than sending electricity over wires long distance, or fossil fuels through pipelines and railways. Ammonia is the chemical battery we've had all along.
Couldn’t the ENRR process work more efficiently by using a series of plates in the electrolyte and then pumping nitrogen gas in from below (like an aerator tank)?
We are producing green ammonia in Morris MN using wind energy to run the electrolyzer, nitrogen scrubber and haber Bosch process. Can be produced with direct pay at cost with hydrogen production credits from the fed. There is research being done to retrofit natural gas turbines to burn the ammonia. This is a big deal because it would allow us to still burn a fuel to produce electricity in other parts of the country but the fuel could be produced using renewable energy in a location hundreds or thousands of miles away from where it is being burned.
Or hear me out, stop wasting energy trying to figure out ways to create ammonia and start culturing nitrogen fixing soil microbes that already make the stuff by not killing them off with salt based fertilizer. The solution to more nitrogen availability is not to disrupt natural processes but to enhance them. Create an environment conducive to their reproduction and nitrogen fixation and they'll do the work with a minute fraction of the energy requirements.
Isn't Methane 50x (or was it 5x?) more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2? Either way, sounds like a good thing to me to split it up and let it turn into CO2.
Regarding the first piece of info Nitrogen production. You NH3 comes from combining N from air and all around us. While H3 comes from CH3+O2=> CO2+H3 and t⁰ which can be used to produce electricity to power all this contrqceptuon(H3mixN). Only thing remaining here te fix is the CO2 which would be cheaper to capture locally using any existing technology scaled for industrial and household complexes.. I'm a dreamer..
Actually the idea I was proposing is that we are running from carbon producing projects though we have them already ready and at scale... all we need is to scale down the technology of carbon capture..
I feel like using electricity to make chemically stored fuel that can be burned again is way less efficient than just using the initial electricity for electric engines in the first place?
And how are you going to get that electricity to something that's going 70MPH down the highway??? You think a wire running along the road, like they do for electric trains in Europe, or a chemical battery inside the car, would be better???
@@lordgarion514 I don’t know if you’ve been living under a rock for the last century or something. You do know that electric cars are an actual thing? You know, the ones which basically run on a heavy-duty rechargeable battery? With the conversional waste of energy you could probably power several more cars, not to mention all that waste heat contributing to atmospheric warming
@@waterunderthebridge7950 You do realize that's you are the one who said charging batteries was stupid..... So, how to power an electric car going down road, without batteries???
@@waterunderthebridge7950 Oh, and charging and discharging a battery are both around 99% efficient. Burning gasoline is about 20-30 percent efficient. Which is why a Tesla needs less than $2 to drive 100 miles. But a gasoline car of the same weight (about 5,000 pounds) needs about 5 gallons of gas to go 100 miles.....
OK, but WHY is ammonia so important to fertilizer? Could better fertilizers be made that do not require ammonia?? Is this why manure is important in fertilizer? Because the methane converts to ammonia somehow?? Like I get if it is the current best fertilizer (or ingredient) then a better way of producing it is great, but why Ammonia in the first place?? I am not a farmer or even an avid gardener, but I have bought plant food to put on some roses I planted at my old house. I don't remember ammonia specifically, but I remember it mentioned nitrogen. It was just a miracle grow crystal that you mixed with water and poured into the soil around the plans, but maybe that is not the same as what is used in agriculture?
The new High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors (HTGR) produce high temperature Hydrogen as a by-product. Wouldn't that be a more efficient way to make Ammonia?
Yes! I've been talking a lot about the new generation reactors and all the extra benefits of them. This is one of them. Although the issue again is scale. Modern NH3 production facilities are using millions of standard cubic feet of hydrogen per day to produce the amount of ammonia needed for our farming requirements.
A nice thing about hydrogen is that it is not super happy to make isotopes when hit with neutrons etc. This means that the hydrogen is fairly easy to keep clean for radioactive stuff. On the other hand, I think salt cooled reactors are better reactors.
every day I am watching UA-cam and I see an unfamiliar scishow video, and I wonder "when did they post THAT"? ... and then I click and find out "oh, 15 minutes ago."
But if we're turning water into ammonia, won't that reduce our water supplies over time, assuming we're using fresh water only? Unless they plan to use non-potable or sea water?
No, because the ammonia is used in plants and then gets released into the atmosphere when it decomposes, or our waste when we eat it. These nitrates or nitrous oxides then break down over time to form atmospheric nitrogen and water again.
@@AnAcceptedName Okay but what we are talking about is accessible, potable water - not just water vapour in the atmosphere. So you're making a false equivalence here. The concern about potable water supplies being depleted for ammonia production is still a valid one.
@@composthis Not really, with the current process of hydrogen production, called steam methane (or sometimes naptha) reforming, it still uses a significantly large quantity of water. The reaction is CH4 + H2O→CO + 3H2. Then the gas shift reaction to concert CO to CO2 with the addition of more water which does create more hydrogen. So using water directly, is only ~half as efficient, but it doesn't create carbon emissions, and hopefully requires significantly less power and energy (steam reforming is wildly endothermic), if it truly can be done at low temperatures and pressures.
question : You say that getting the hydroge from methan leaves the carbon free to creatz CO2 ... isn't the process more like ripping a couple H atomes from the methans, so that the CO2 remains behind? Isn't methane a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2? Aren't theire ways to isolate the carbon so all the hydrogen can go into ammonia, and the carbon can be retrieved for other uses?
Methane is 8x more potent as a greenhouse gas then CO2 so wouldnt converting one methane molecule to one CO2 be a net gain and not really a negative? I agree with the vast amounts of power being a problem but as renewables become greater % of energy production the problem starts fixing itself right?
Haber Bosch process doesn’t require natural gas as the feed. Straight hydrogen and nitrogen works too. You do however need an external source of energy to drive the compressors and heat the process. Natural gas is useful for scrubbing the oxygen out of the feed air… Uranium is a more efficient catalyst than the iron used in most of the modern ammonia plants…
@@ooooneeee Hydrogen occurs quite commonly in nature. Just not on earth where you have organisms generating that universally rare free oxygen… Converting water to hydrogen is easy but does involve energy consumption. Plants do it all the time. That’s step one in photosynthesis - generating free protons. Oxygen is a waste product from this. The hydrogen is then used to reduce carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons. Electrochemistry is far more efficient however - particularly if you crank up the temperature.
@@GabrieleR95 Lol yeah realized my "4 vs 3" mistake after I posted... Not entirely sure there's hard rules on the colors tho haha but whatever yeah my bad
A quick thought ~ Making CO2 out of methane is to my best knowledge better than letting that methane go freely to the atmosphere. Methane is more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. We just need to figure out how to capture methane made by our live stock and us rather than sourcing it from the ground.
we should also eat more beans, they don’t need as much nitrogen fertilizer because they make it themselves (well symbiotic bacteria). someone should try to popularize bean cake, i hear people prefer low gluten (amount/cross linking) in cake flour as is
How much methane is being taken out of the atmosphere by the current process? Isn't methane, although shorter lived, more effective at trapping greenhouse gasses than CO2? If we switched over, would we see a short term spike in the greenhouse effect as methane levels rose?
you dont actually need to use artificial fertiizers if you farm correctly. we only need it because of our inefficient monocultural agricuture model, and were destoying the planet in the process by altering the soil and water chemistry in areas adjacent to the fields. the carbon footprint is also probem too. We should be using natural fertilizers like orgnic waste and compost instead of artificial fertilizers
1. Isn't this basically just electrolysis with nitrogen added? 2. Do any biochemists know why we have to use ammonia and not just straight nitrogen? Is it just easier to transport as ammonia? Because I thought the nitrogen was the whole point of the use of ammonia in farming and not the hydrogen.
We can have self fertilizing cycles in the soil, it isn't a trial or anything, it's slightly more complicated and annoying for someone who own thousands of acres worked by 10 people and a lot of machines This system produces less and has a bigger carbon footprint than alternatives but is already in place, changing in learning is not the strong suit for rich people
Haber-Bosch increases CO2 by 1%, but how much does it indirectly decrease CO2 with healthier plants? Of course if you would still get that same decrease without any increase with ENRR.
There is a large and vast free source of ammonia in the form of our liquid wastes which could be harvested as we have done in the past burnstead are purposefully consumed in giant digesters and released
Already have had green energy generation, nuclear. People became scared because of state secrets surrounding RBMK reactor designs that safe models and well engineered nuclear reactors look like bombs to those without any knowledge on the matter. "green energy" as it stands is a band-aid that isn't solving anything just adding to the problem with more carbon footprint, on top of the human right issues surrounding the creation of solar panels. Modern fission reactors are almost if not more redundant than NASA operations, and have to operate almost constantly while NASA missions have to work only a handful of times in as harsh of an environment as a nuclear reactor's internals at full operation. Yes its a big footprint initially to build but its better, more efficient, AND isn't a fossil fuel. Can use its heat for steel mills, water desalination plants, on top of the massive medical field that would damn near flop within the first 5 years of there being zero nuclear reactors being operated.
I'm afraid fixing nitrogen is one of the worst things we've done on our planet, whatever the emissions from production. For hundreds of millions of years this was solely done by nitrogen fixing organisms, naturally limiting life on our planet at sustainable levels. Things changed when we learned to do it ourselves. Human growth exploded*. Giving an out of control invasive organism destroying our planet (that's us) everything it needs to grow larger is a bad idea. Sorry. People will suffer horribly either way at this point. There are just too many people. The paradigm of constant growth will likely destroy us, and that's ok. It's just a question of how many people will suffer for what we decided to do yesterday, and decide to do today and tomorrow. edit:*along with the other invasive organisms we introduce as we made "life better" for us. As a whole, our species lacks wisdom. We make the same mistakes over and over, being guided by the broken paradigm of constant expansion. #2 Don't even get me started on how many deaths can be attributed to explosives made with fixed nitrogen.
Still not sure why businesses aren't just "farming" ammonia at waste management facilities. Pee is an abundant ressource, seems like using it as a raw source of ammonia would make sense.
Mentioning ammonia fertilizers and climate change without mentioning the detrimental effects that soluble nitrogen fertilizers have on soil organic matter and carbon sequestration seems like a pretty massive oversight.
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Yes, I agree with you about the dangerous of NH3 as fuel!!*
Safety:💀
Hope they realize what will happen when accidents occur !!!
ua-cam.com/video/KT-3WZ-23Ac/v-deo.html
In old ammonia car we need to raise awareness of leaking as well!!
More over is about Global warming:🌍
I don't think ammonia combustion engine vehicles 🚗,🚤,✈ type is a good IDEA!!Burning NH3 can cause NxO and NO gas, (However for power plant with NxO gasses scrubber system might be OK, If they prepare air filter Gas mask as emergency PPE incase of leaking!!)
The NxO gasses such as Nitrous oxide can cause more global warming than CO2 300 time and live upto 144 years!!
both NH3 and NO gas are toxic, especially when accidents occur.
BTW: Aged urine was a source of ammonia for cleaning wool after it was woven. That job was what a "fuller" did for a living. They poured fermented urine in a big tub, put in the wool and hopped in to stomp it with their feet. The stomping and ammonia got the lanolin out of the wool making it soft and fluffy to be nice and warm.
Sounds very gross 🤮
It is a nonsense to put artificially made ammonia on fields, while pouring ammonium salts into the sewage system, to poison our rivers and sea water.
Neat & disgusting at the same time.
So wetting the bed makes it softer?
I eat so many vegetables that any piece of ground that I pee on instantly turns into like a green patch... Real talk I think it must be nitrogen or something.
Worth a mention that ammonia is easy to transport as it becomes a liquid at achievable temperature and pressure. I'm old enough to remember ladies carrying "smelling salts" to revive others that had fainted. :) Sure in high concentrations not good but it has a smell that's impossible to ignore. It's also highly soluble in water so a leak is fairly easy to deal with.
I remember in the mid 00s, when I was 16 or so, my best friend got her hands on smelling salts. Still dunno where she got it, same girl came home with an entire canister of laughing gas one time. But yeah- that is absolutely a smell you NEVER forget.
@Miss Spaz It’s pretty easy to but cartridges of laughing gas (nitrous oxide) as it’s used in whipped cream. It’s legal to buy for the purpose of making whipped cream, but it’s not like they make sure that’s what you’re using it for. Many head shops sell packages of whipped cream cartridges.
@@Sniperboy5551 does this mean it's possible to get high from inhaling gallons of straight whipped cream
Ammonia products ARE actually used for foodstuffs. Ammonia salts are commonly used in liqourice known as Salmiak. Also ammonium carbonates are used as baking powder for certain recipes.
I can confirm this. We have an old family recipe for sugar cookies that uses hartshorn or ammonium carbonate as the leavening agent. They have a distinct tasty flavor when baked and, if you put the cookies in an airtight container before they're iced it smells like ammonia when you open the container.
@@SimuLord 🤣
Weird thing. In the low countries and Scandinavia ammonia chloride is CANDY. I can eat it by the handful!
Outside this area ..... not so much.
@@DutchLabrat Salmiak is wat er in Nederland gegeten word, ammoniumchloride ;)
@@DutchLabrat That _is_ weird. Is it sweet?
One huge point in favor of the Haber Bosch Process is just how cheap the required catalyst is - it's mostly based on iron, containing small amounts of other cheap metal oxides as promoters. If a successor process to Haber Bosch wants to have any chance at viability it must have a catalyst superior in price to performance. To add insult to injury even if a catalyst of superior qualities is available - the Haber Bosch Process scales exceptionally well on an industrial level. For the time being it is my opinion that the most realistic chance to advance the nitrogen fixation is to "clean up" the classic Haber Bosch Process, mostly by addressing the steam reforming process that is currently the main source of hydrogen, but unfortunately that is another deep chemical rabbit hole in its own right.
Could be cleaned up by electrolytically derived hydrogen, using solar or wind power and storing the hydrogen long term.
@@OsamaBingChilling the amount of hydrogen needed, and the amount of power required are insane. Unfortunately there is a lot more to it than rigging up a Dozend wind / solar generators next to an ammonia plant and sticking some electrodes in the faucet.
The major reason why this isnt used today is because its very slow and operating costs are high. Think of it like this: the Haber-Bosch method is driving your car, this method right now is like driving your car on gold and the top speed is 1 mile per hour. Before we can drive down the costs its useless, because costs is often very well correlated with Co2 emissions.
So right now the process is like driving a car with a top speed of 1 mile an hour and it spews out so much Co2 cars looks clean.
Yeah, initially I misread this though. Haber-Bosch with red hydrogen & process heat is basically my vision of the future, if such a future is ever achieved before we go extinct. Planes would definitely benefit from liquid hydrogen though.
@Dan Humans won't go extinct. Even a global nuclear war wouldn't be enough. Only a 1 in 300 million year asteroid would do the trick.
@@ChemEDan Liquid hydrogen 😂 If even space companies do everything possible to not use liquid hydrogen for rockets, why would airplane companies do the same?
This is a good point, but the phrasing is confusing.
@@themonkeyspaw7359 For the same reason space companies supposedly feel like they're forced to - LH2 has the best specific impulse.
Planes benefit in many ways that rockets can't. For example, solid oxide fuel cells have the same power density as gas turbines but almost twice the efficiency. Rockets are pretty much stuck with rocket engines as their powerplants. Also LH2 planes could reach higher altitudes than hydrocarbon planes, so they would enjoy lower drag. Rockets spend most of their time above the atmosphere so it's not a valid comparison.
Side effects of having cryogenic liquids available - chilled magnet cores (higher magnetic fields before they get saturated) and superconducting wires (no need for heat rejection) make transformers and motors extremely compact. And air can be precooled if you're compressing it.
It gets even better with scaling, which has been the trend anyway for some time now. It's not difficult to imagine a plane with several thousand passengers slowly lumbering through the sky. They'd probably have more people than most of the towns they fly over. #flyoverstate
The band *Sabaton* has written a song called *'Father'* dedicated to *Fritz Haber* , contemplating his historic significance and controversy because he is know as the *"Father of artifical fertilizers"* , thus saving maybe millions from famine and starvation but he is also the *"Father of chemical warfare"* because he was the main proponent of the deployment of poisonous gases on the battlefields in WW1.
Check out the song and the videoclip: *Sabaton, Father*
As soon as he mentioned artificial fertilizer the song popped straight into my head
That’s metal af, I’ve never gotten into their music, but I’ve definitely heard of them. That sounds like a cool song, thanks for sharing bro!
@@Sniperboy5551 i suggest you to discover their music. Not my favourite band either, but they have some nice story telling, and they are incredible on stage.
I'm a Boomer, and their name alone got me to look.
I got hooked from their storytelling.
Plants use protein nitogenase that has a molecule FeMoCo which stands for iron molybdenum cofactor which can reduce nitrogen gas to ammonia. The chemical mechanism is fascinating.
And by "plants" you mean Cyanobacteria, surely? Nitrogenase are destroyed by oxygen, which plants both produce, and need to breath, which is why they rely on symbiotic bacteria to fix nitrogen for them. Fun fact: some plants have a hemoglobin analogue (Leghemoglobin) that makes their roots "bleed" red, and is believed to be an oxygen quench to keep the nitrogen fixing bacteria happy and anoxic. (And thus their nitrogenase working properly.)
You can't "reduce" nitrogen gas into ammonia lol. Or anything else for that matter.
@@MadScientist267 Reduction means decreasing the oxidation state in chemistry. From 0 in nitrogen gas to -3 in ammonia.
The nitrogen fixing bacteria themselves are sourced with some oxygen as the symbiotic organisms are aerobic. The leghemonoglobin only faciliates a level oxygen supply so the nitrogenase is protected. Some leguminous plants can utilize the nitrogenase to convert N_2 to ammonia(NH_3), with the ntirogenase enzyme complex facilitated by ATP binding.
@@jackkrell4238 "Some leguminous plants can utilize the nitrogenase..." Could I get a citation for that? If it's true I really want to read that paper.
How do make it indeed :)
Hmm, actually this sounds like the Red Hydrogen systems Japan is trying to scale up to commercial levels could produce Ammonia with just an few extra steps. Red Hydrogen involves using a gas cooled high temperature reactor to provide super high temperatures to power a process to split off hydrogen from water, so just take that red hydrogen and add an extra layer to use the heat from that same reactor to bond it with nitrogen.
Why is it called red hydrogen?
You can do the same with two electrodes submerged in water, plugged to a power source @ 12V DC. The electric current will split water into H2 and O2 (electrolysis). You pump out hydrogen out of the system, into a high temperature reactor from one side, and you pump in N2 from the other side to make NH3 inside the reactor.
I just don't get where you're coming from with your '' Red hydrogen ''. That's the first time I ever hear about it. Metallic hydrogen ? Yes. Red hydrogen ? Never.
hydrogen is assigned a color based on how it is produced. It’s a hydrogen economy quirk. No real reason behind some colors. Hydrogen is colorless.
White = natural
Red/Pink/Purple = nuclear
Green/Yellow = renewable
Blue = fossil fuel + carbon capture
Grey = natural gas (vast majority)
Brown/Black = coal
@@leaf742 Never knew about that. We learn something everyday, it seems.
@@azmanabdula There are a lot of different colors assigned to Hydrogen based on how it's made. Red Hydrogen it's made via a thermal process with the heat provided by nuclear power.
The man who invented the Haber-Bosch process is also the brain behind the Chemical Warfare of Germany in WW 1.
If your heat source for the Haber-Bosch was Nuclear, the whole impact could be reduced.
ENRR might not be scalable. Some things just aren't.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, won't know until we exhaust every possibility.
What further hurdles are restricting ENRR that you can identify? I have a more detailed hypothesis in another comment.
@@marcwebb1415 I honestly don't know. However I used to be an assistant at a facility that was trying to scale up electrical production from hydrogen fuel cells to power something "larger than a car". They had been working on it for decades before I came on.
It wasn't going to work and the project was eventually shelved. In this case the larger the electron exchange membrane, the less efficient it worked. There were diminishing returns that scaled exponentially with the surface area of the membrane to the point where you would actually start losing power production.
From a power production standpoint you are better off running multiple fuel cells in parallel than running a large fuel cell.
But when you are trying to design a hydrogen fuel cell powered electric aircraft, the weight of multiple cells is a no go.
Now what little I do know about ENRR is that it's basically electrolysis with extra steps. It's the exact opposite process to hydrogen fuel cell power generation.
More to the point though, I wasn't saying that ENRR can't be scaled up, I'm saying that maybe the problems they are experiencing with trying to scale it up might be because it can't be scaled. Some things just can't be scaled, at least not with our current understanding of physics.
Ammonia makes an excellent refrigerant and was also the original before CFCs!
The poisonous properties of a ammonia argue against using it in that way. That was the reason to look of other gases to use.
@@kensmith5694 Antifreeze is toxic too, but people continue to use
One advantage is that if there is a leak, you know very quickly!
@@kensmith5694 -- It's still in common use for large plants. It's cheap. Leaks can quickly be detected. Most commercial ice plants still use it.
@@kensmith5694 Ammonia is still used in commercial and domestic refrigeration.
Caravan gas fridges use ammonia as the refrigerant.
Propane is more common in compressor systems now.
If we would alternate our crops with nitrogen fixing cover crops we wouldn't have to rely on fertilizers so much.
Yes, if we eat more beans the problem is less. Bean fix nitrogen. Rice and corn need nitrogen. Mix them together with some spices and you have a tasty dinner.
You can also intercrop, as in plant them at the exact same time. Since the legumes will not compete as much for nitrogen, most other plants will do just fine. This is the same idea behind the Three Sisters method indigenous farmers use.
Hank, you better be telling your kids all your Dad jokes! Especially the science jokes. I hope, because you have a fun delivery, that your kids enjoy all the science you bring to them!
We really need a lot of STEM - motivated kids with a liberal dousing of the Arts. And your kids are in that next up and coming generation we'll need to help push forward.
my guess is that they are the reason we only hear the good ones
There is a company called Fuel Positive that is working on a method to create green ammonia and hopefully will come out with it this year.
It is not a problem to make it. Problem is to make it cheap, or at least comparable by price to other methods.
Ammonia cars would be a way to keep the combustion engine alive, enthusiasts grieve the loss of several ICE characteristics in EVs.
@@protocetid Ammonia cars are never happening because of safety concerns. This is mainly about energy storage and fertilizers. (and maybe shipping)
Woohoo! Got it right! Saw the molecule and thought: That's NH3, ammonia. Chemistry A-Levels was useful after all.
What about bacterial nitrogen fixation? Have we found a way to make ammonia that way for cheap and easy?
For anyone who may wonder, all of these things are very easy to figure out in theory. Not complex really at all. The hard part is getting them to the realistic level.
Hey scishow. Have you looked at doing an episode on custom metabolism microbes? It's a newer field In biotech where many many new genes are added to microbes to enhance the efficiency of photosynthesis. And then use the extra available energy to say break down plastics in the environment into the oil they came from or into water and insoluble carbon. The insoluble carbon is left behind in the microbes body and a huge farm of these guys could be used to generate clean drinking water and graphite from plastic trash.
Hank, the compressed gas version of ammonia as a fertilizer doesn’t pollute the ground water. Only granules and liquids pollute.
Interesting, but in order to be seriously done, it has to be cheaper as well. The best option currently on the horizon is to stick with HB process and get the high temperatures from nuclear power. Current reactors run about 300C and are at high pressure. Newer Gen IV reactors are designed to run at ~700C and low pressure which is more than enough to come up with the heat, pressure (and electric power) needed to make NH3. Using direct heat from reactors is more efficient as it saves a conversion step, and the reactors can be made small, such as the SMRs discussed today. See "MSR" (Molten Salt Reactor) for more info. Thorium can also be used for even greater fuel efficiency.
Ammonia _can_ create solutions. It can be solved in water, which btw. can produce a nice fountain in an Erlenmeyer flask, but it is also used as nonaqueous solvent, for example for sodium.
Another certified neighborhood classic
If we built LFTRs, we could make carbon neutral ammonia. LFTRs in 5 minutes.
@@thebarkingmouse - What about slippage?
Well that’s a title
Couldn't they harvest ammonia from human waste using an enzyme? Oops, the answer is sort of, but it's still ineffective.
"Direct stripping of ammonia (NH3) from urine with no chemical addition achieved only 12% total nitrogen recovery at hydraulic retention times comparable with the EC systems. Our results demonstrate that ammonia can be extracted via electrochemical means at reasonable energy inputs of approximately 12 kWh kg(-1) N"
Anybody old enough to remember diaper pails knows that urine can very quickly turn to ammonia. About a millennium ago and sooner people used to pee into barrels that were used to make ammonia for cleaning houses and other purposes. Why can’t we deal with a way to collect urine to create ammonia? Would reduce waste in water and be meeting a need.
0:00 before the video I already knew what they were talking about
With the population at 8 billion, the strain on resources, the depletion of wildlife and natural spaces, is unsustainable. I didn't eat cake, I cried.
"How do Make It"
Was there not enough room in the title, was it a typo, or was it intentional?
Love reading scishow comments, half for learning random facts which is always a plus and half to laugh at people trying to be smart arses😅👌🏼
what about genetically modified nitrogen fixing soil bacteria to replace nitrogen fertilizer?
I'm pretty sure I heard there is a company trialling nitrogen fixing bacteria with the self regulating gene turned off so they continue fixing nitrogen even when the soil concentration is high.
After some quick googling, the company is called Pivot Bio. It seems like a much better alternative than just a diffrent process for making amoinia.
It's a scale problem. Bioreactors are a pain to scale and it would be weird to see their genetic modifications last long if they tried to get it into the wild population. It will be very hard to outcompete the easily scaled HB process. My guess is the company goal is to eat into the HB process market like a lot of green energy is eating into oil and gas, rather than a full replacement of the process.
@@Virtuous_Rogue Bioreactors may have an advantage if they take in sunlight as the energy source. It would not be small in footprint but it may take a lot less energy input. In a world where the cost of energy is the cost of everything, it may work out to be a good idea.
@@kensmith5694 The main cost issue with bioreactors is you have to supply nutrients to the bacteria (very expensive and probably a custom mix) and have very tight controls on things like pH. It's very hard to keep a big container at uniform conditions when stirring it too hard will kill your bacteria so scaling usually involves adding more units which adds more complexity. If energy prices really skyrocket it could become viable.
How do make, Hank? How do!
Power all of it by renewable resources and source the H2 directly from hydrolysis and the Haber-Bosch process becomes attractive again. To account for the gap in intermittent renewable energy, you use a combined cycle NH3-H2 dual fuel turbine (optimizing the mix yields greater energy output as well as minimizes NOx emissions). If the N2 air separation, hydrolysis (& H2 compression/storage), and Haber-Bosch processes are all done relatively close by to each other, then only pipelines need be used rather than waste more unnecessary energy on transport.
+Bonus points if you repurpose a LNG pipeline to carry the ammonia to the final point of use.
++Double bonus if you ship it across the globe on a vessel retrofitted to run on NH3-H2 dual fuel where the H2 is obtained by ammonia cracking using the waste heat of the engine.
Nuclear energy can also be used to power all of it and you wouldn’t have the intermittency problem of solar and wind energy
I'm surprised you didn't mention one of the key reasons this pairs better with green tech than Haber: Intermittency. The high pressures and temperatures associated with traditional ammonia production mean that it is expensive to start and stop. If you switched all hydrocarbons out for green electricity you would need a large energy storage facility to keep power consistent. Low temperature low pressure processes can start and stop near instantly, meaning you could run it powered by solar during the day and not at night, removing the need for energy storage. It could actually talk to the grid and help to manage power levels, replacing other power infrastructure.
Thanx for the gratuitous reference to the excellent band Three Friends
I too, have wondered…
How do make it?
Edit: In regards to water based electrolyte inefficiencies at large scale ENRR procedure, could such issues also be addressed by amplifying the flow of current introduced to the water-nitrogen mixture? i.e. Would advances in thorium fueled nuclear reactors, and other endeavors in advanced electrical generation, produce output that would be sufficient for such processes using available technologies applied in the described apparatus?
Yes
You're a solution looking for a problem lol
@@MadScientist267 I don't know, I think climate change and the prospect of mass starvation if we find ourselves without good ways of generating ammonia are pretty big problems.
@@wasd____ Oh yes because THAT'S what's gonna do it... 🤣🙄
Thank you
Cat pee. Cat pee is full of ammonia. Just separate the ammonia from the rest of the pee. I discovered that one of my cats had been going in the corner of the laundry room while I was ill, once. I poured some bleach on the puddle and got a lovely poisonous foam, which I let sit for a bit.
Yeah, but how do you get cats to pee *on command*? Sure, they’ll pee everywhere you DON’T want them to, but have you ever seen a cat do anything you DO want them to? I mean, except by accident, which is when they look at you like “I totally meant to do that, you puny human.” 😂
Not to take the joke too seriously, but as cats are obligate carnivores, the cost of producing that ammonia would be exceptionally high due to the carbon footprint of livestock farming. A good way to make use of it though is to get a biodegradable clumping litter, and then use the clumps as fertilizer. It also helps scare away rodent pests in your garden.
Yeah no, collecting human pee would be a lot easier and we produce more than cats too.
If this works for ammonia, maybe it'd also work for just plain old H2 gas, too. Right now all of the ways we produce molecular hydrogen are pretty nasty, pollution-wise. Run this method off of solar-power or wind-power and you'd have a totally green way of generating both ammonia and hydrogen gas (just leave out the part where you combine it with nitrogen and you've got hydrogen gas).
8 Billions.
We have about 2 or 3 billion more in us until we naturally start to level out
Unless technology changes for the better...or climate change changes for the worse...
The chaos is gonna be lit
Sustainable Earth was at 2-3 Billion
5:00 i think you mean "energy vector" rather than "energy source", we still need to produce the energy for the reaction to create it, but yeah, it's easier to store and transport than hydrogen, and could be useful to convert extra wind/solar power during production peaks for this kind of usage.
"How do Make It", someone didn't proof read the title.
Thanks 👍
How do make it indeed...
Is the fork in the opener with the cake slice, a specific kind of fork for a specific purpose? Looks very strange with its asymmetric relief on the tines!
Pretty sure it’s just a modern salad/dessert fork. They often have that little swoop on one edge to help with cutting some things. But you are right, that the pattern of the cut outs to create the tines is very unusual and asymmetric!
This is real, not just research. You can buy a unit, it shows up in a seacan and they drop it on your farm, it makes 4 tonnes a day, you plug in green energy and water and attach a tank for the ammonia.
There are several companies making ammonia from green electricity (electrolysis), air and water. Generally, they say making liquid ammonia is about 70% energy efficient to make ammonia liquid. To put that in perspective, making hydrogen is usually about 75% efficient but then cooling hydrogen to liquid uses another 30% of the energy. This means ammonia has a huge efficiency advantage for green fuel applications.
Oh, another cool thing about this ammonia tech is it can handle variable power inputs. If it is a super cloudy day and the power going into the system is lower the production is lower BUT you still have production. Allowing green energy to be decoupled from a grid really changes the financial considerations.
Shout out to all my Bangaloreans here! That chaos from 2.10 - 2.15 is our beloved K.R. market. 😂
5:00 small mistake: "Ammonia could become an alternative source of energy". If it requires energy in the first place to make it, it's not called an energy source, but an energetic vector. It helps store and/
or transport energy. It's like electricity: it can transport energy but electricity it not an energy SOURCE because you can't harvest it or extract it from the ground. It's like hydrogen as well because (at least for most of it) doesn't come out of a well and energy used to make it is bigger than energy collected once "using" it.
Hang on. N2 needs x amount of energy to be broken apart. Why would one method be so much better at it than the other? They ought to be using roughly the same amount to break down the Nitrogen. Is the Haber-Bosch method really THAT inefficient?
It's more about the issue of hydrogen creation than necessarily about the combination with nitrogen. The issues presented in this story is because each side of the membrane need to be in liquid solution in order for the ions to pass. It does however cut down on the need for the haber Bosch process's need to be at high pressure, which is energy intensive.
@@AnAcceptedName Ahh, I see. Thank you.
Ammonia could actually be one of the solutions to long term storage and transport when it comes to renewable energy sources. You've mentioned in other videos that a challenge for renewables like solar and wind is how to store the energy until it's needed, which is a problem that fossil fuels do not have since the chemical energy is already stored up in the fuel itself. If we used the excess energy from green sources to produce ammonia, that ammonia could be transported more safely and efficiency than sending electricity over wires long distance, or fossil fuels through pipelines and railways. Ammonia is the chemical battery we've had all along.
Good ole ammonia!
Couldn’t the ENRR process work more efficiently by using a series of plates in the electrolyte and then pumping nitrogen gas in from below (like an aerator tank)?
We are producing green ammonia in Morris MN using wind energy to run the electrolyzer, nitrogen scrubber and haber Bosch process. Can be produced with direct pay at cost with hydrogen production credits from the fed. There is research being done to retrofit natural gas turbines to burn the ammonia. This is a big deal because it would allow us to still burn a fuel to produce electricity in other parts of the country but the fuel could be produced using renewable energy in a location hundreds or thousands of miles away from where it is being burned.
Or hear me out, stop wasting energy trying to figure out ways to create ammonia and start culturing nitrogen fixing soil microbes that already make the stuff by not killing them off with salt based fertilizer.
The solution to more nitrogen availability is not to disrupt natural processes but to enhance them. Create an environment conducive to their reproduction and nitrogen fixation and they'll do the work with a minute fraction of the energy requirements.
don't celebrate the creation of another 1,000,000,000 humans
Isn't Methane 50x (or was it 5x?) more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2? Either way, sounds like a good thing to me to split it up and let it turn into CO2.
Regarding the first piece of info Nitrogen production. You NH3 comes from combining N from air and all around us. While H3 comes from CH3+O2=> CO2+H3 and t⁰ which can be used to produce electricity to power all this contrqceptuon(H3mixN). Only thing remaining here te fix is the CO2 which would be cheaper to capture locally using any existing technology scaled for industrial and household complexes.. I'm a dreamer..
Actually the idea I was proposing is that we are running from carbon producing projects though we have them already ready and at scale... all we need is to scale down the technology of carbon capture..
I feel like using electricity to make chemically stored fuel that can be burned again is way less efficient than just using the initial electricity for electric engines in the first place?
And how are you going to get that electricity to something that's going 70MPH down the highway???
You think a wire running along the road, like they do for electric trains in Europe, or a chemical battery inside the car, would be better???
@@lordgarion514 I don’t know if you’ve been living under a rock for the last century or something. You do know that electric cars are an actual thing? You know, the ones which basically run on a heavy-duty rechargeable battery?
With the conversional waste of energy you could probably power several more cars, not to mention all that waste heat contributing to atmospheric warming
@@waterunderthebridge7950
You do realize that's you are the one who said charging batteries was stupid.....
So, how to power an electric car going down road, without batteries???
@@waterunderthebridge7950
Maybe you should have a 12 year old read your first post, and tell you what you meant. Lol
@@waterunderthebridge7950
Oh, and charging and discharging a battery are both around 99% efficient.
Burning gasoline is about 20-30 percent efficient.
Which is why a Tesla needs less than $2 to drive 100 miles.
But a gasoline car of the same weight (about 5,000 pounds) needs about 5 gallons of gas to go 100 miles.....
OK, but WHY is ammonia so important to fertilizer? Could better fertilizers be made that do not require ammonia??
Is this why manure is important in fertilizer? Because the methane converts to ammonia somehow??
Like I get if it is the current best fertilizer (or ingredient) then a better way of producing it is great, but why Ammonia in the first place??
I am not a farmer or even an avid gardener, but I have bought plant food to put on some roses I planted at my old house. I don't remember ammonia specifically, but I remember it mentioned nitrogen. It was just a miracle grow crystal that you mixed with water and poured into the soil around the plans, but maybe that is not the same as what is used in agriculture?
The new High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors (HTGR) produce high temperature Hydrogen as a by-product.
Wouldn't that be a more efficient way to make Ammonia?
Yes! I've been talking a lot about the new generation reactors and all the extra benefits of them. This is one of them. Although the issue again is scale. Modern NH3 production facilities are using millions of standard cubic feet of hydrogen per day to produce the amount of ammonia needed for our farming requirements.
A nice thing about hydrogen is that it is not super happy to make isotopes when hit with neutrons etc. This means that the hydrogen is fairly easy to keep clean for radioactive stuff. On the other hand, I think salt cooled reactors are better reactors.
HANK what is the catalyst??That seems to be the most important part of this.
every day I am watching UA-cam and I see an unfamiliar scishow video, and I wonder "when did they post THAT"? ... and then I click and find out "oh, 15 minutes ago."
But if we're turning water into ammonia, won't that reduce our water supplies over time, assuming we're using fresh water only? Unless they plan to use non-potable or sea water?
No, because the ammonia is used in plants and then gets released into the atmosphere when it decomposes, or our waste when we eat it. These nitrates or nitrous oxides then break down over time to form atmospheric nitrogen and water again.
@@AnAcceptedName Cool, good to know.
@@AnAcceptedName Okay but what we are talking about is accessible, potable water - not just water vapour in the atmosphere. So you're making a false equivalence here. The concern about potable water supplies being depleted for ammonia production is still a valid one.
@@composthis Not really, with the current process of hydrogen production, called steam methane (or sometimes naptha) reforming, it still uses a significantly large quantity of water. The reaction is CH4 + H2O→CO + 3H2. Then the gas shift reaction to concert CO to CO2 with the addition of more water which does create more hydrogen. So using water directly, is only ~half as efficient, but it doesn't create carbon emissions, and hopefully requires significantly less power and energy (steam reforming is wildly endothermic), if it truly can be done at low temperatures and pressures.
Where do you people come from
question : You say that getting the hydroge from methan leaves the carbon free to creatz CO2 ... isn't the process more like ripping a couple H atomes from the methans, so that the CO2 remains behind? Isn't methane a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2? Aren't theire ways to isolate the carbon so all the hydrogen can go into ammonia, and the carbon can be retrieved for other uses?
Methane is 8x more potent as a greenhouse gas then CO2 so wouldnt converting one methane molecule to one CO2 be a net gain and not really a negative? I agree with the vast amounts of power being a problem but as renewables become greater % of energy production the problem starts fixing itself right?
Haber Bosch process doesn’t require natural gas as the feed. Straight hydrogen and nitrogen works too.
You do however need an external source of energy to drive the compressors and heat the process.
Natural gas is useful for scrubbing the oxygen out of the feed air…
Uranium is a more efficient catalyst than the iron used in most of the modern ammonia plants…
Hydrogen doesn't occur in nature much so it has to be made from hydrocarbons.
@@ooooneeee Hydrogen occurs quite commonly in nature. Just not on earth where you have organisms generating that universally rare free oxygen…
Converting water to hydrogen is easy but does involve energy consumption.
Plants do it all the time. That’s step one in photosynthesis - generating free protons. Oxygen is a waste product from this. The hydrogen is then used to reduce carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons.
Electrochemistry is far more efficient however - particularly if you crank up the temperature.
Interesting, thank you for sharing this with us 🙋🏻♂️
Based on the video title I actually was expecting you to say "ammonia", Hank.
The thumbnail as well, it's a pretty recognisable molecule.
@@GabrieleR95 Could just as easily be methane 🤣
@@MadScientist267 Nitrogen is usually blue in these models, and carbon is usually black. Also methane has 4 hydrogen atoms...
@@GabrieleR95 Lol yeah realized my "4 vs 3" mistake after I posted... Not entirely sure there's hard rules on the colors tho haha but whatever yeah my bad
A quick thought ~ Making CO2 out of methane is to my best knowledge better than letting that methane go freely to the atmosphere. Methane is more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. We just need to figure out how to capture methane made by our live stock and us rather than sourcing it from the ground.
Wow I don’t know how do make. Now I know how do make
we should also eat more beans, they don’t need as much nitrogen fertilizer because they make it themselves (well symbiotic bacteria). someone should try to popularize bean cake, i hear people prefer low gluten (amount/cross linking) in cake flour as is
How much methane is being taken out of the atmosphere by the current process? Isn't methane, although shorter lived, more effective at trapping greenhouse gasses than CO2? If we switched over, would we see a short term spike in the greenhouse effect as methane levels rose?
you dont actually need to use artificial fertiizers if you farm correctly. we only need it because of our inefficient monocultural agricuture model, and were destoying the planet in the process by altering the soil and water chemistry in areas adjacent to the fields. the carbon footprint is also probem too. We should be using natural fertilizers like orgnic waste and compost instead of artificial fertilizers
1. Isn't this basically just electrolysis with nitrogen added?
2. Do any biochemists know why we have to use ammonia and not just straight nitrogen? Is it just easier to transport as ammonia? Because I thought the nitrogen was the whole point of the use of ammonia in farming and not the hydrogen.
That was brilliant
Everyone in the comments is trying to explain the science, my simple mind is just looking at the grammer in the title. Lol
We can have self fertilizing cycles in the soil, it isn't a trial or anything, it's slightly more complicated and annoying for someone who own thousands of acres worked by 10 people and a lot of machines
This system produces less and has a bigger carbon footprint than alternatives but is already in place, changing in learning is not the strong suit for rich people
How do, yes.
How do make it indeed
Haber-Bosch increases CO2 by 1%, but how much does it indirectly decrease CO2 with healthier plants? Of course if you would still get that same decrease without any increase with ENRR.
It doesn't decrease carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere because the carbon trapped in food is released when consumed or left rotting.
How do indeed
If we can make Ammonia, Hydrogen peroxide, Aromatics, etc… Without a big co2 emission it would be great
"How do Make it"
I love the smell of ammonia.
There is a large and vast free source of ammonia in the form of our liquid wastes which could be harvested as we have done in the past burnstead are purposefully consumed in giant digesters and released
Already have had green energy generation, nuclear. People became scared because of state secrets surrounding RBMK reactor designs that safe models and well engineered nuclear reactors look like bombs to those without any knowledge on the matter. "green energy" as it stands is a band-aid that isn't solving anything just adding to the problem with more carbon footprint, on top of the human right issues surrounding the creation of solar panels. Modern fission reactors are almost if not more redundant than NASA operations, and have to operate almost constantly while NASA missions have to work only a handful of times in as harsh of an environment as a nuclear reactor's internals at full operation. Yes its a big footprint initially to build but its better, more efficient, AND isn't a fossil fuel. Can use its heat for steel mills, water desalination plants, on top of the massive medical field that would damn near flop within the first 5 years of there being zero nuclear reactors being operated.
Yeah, how DO make?
Ammonia is used to make baking Powder which is used in cakes
I'm afraid fixing nitrogen is one of the worst things we've done on our planet, whatever the emissions from production. For hundreds of millions of years this was solely done by nitrogen fixing organisms, naturally limiting life on our planet at sustainable levels. Things changed when we learned to do it ourselves. Human growth exploded*. Giving an out of control invasive organism destroying our planet (that's us) everything it needs to grow larger is a bad idea. Sorry. People will suffer horribly either way at this point. There are just too many people. The paradigm of constant growth will likely destroy us, and that's ok. It's just a question of how many people will suffer for what we decided to do yesterday, and decide to do today and tomorrow.
edit:*along with the other invasive organisms we introduce as we made "life better" for us. As a whole, our species lacks wisdom. We make the same mistakes over and over, being guided by the broken paradigm of constant expansion.
#2 Don't even get me started on how many deaths can be attributed to explosives made with fixed nitrogen.
So does Haber-Bosch have to use methane as its hydrogen source? We can't just electrolyse water and pipe in the hydrogen gas?
It like removing rust from my tools
So ENRR produces oxygen?
Which could be used to used in the other process.
not sure if ammonia would be the best choice of biofuel... considering the inherent boom boom potential
Can we “mine” NH3 at farms and waste water treatment facilities? This would have a positive impact on down stream environments.
Still not sure why businesses aren't just "farming" ammonia at waste management facilities. Pee is an abundant ressource, seems like using it as a raw source of ammonia would make sense.
You'd have to distill it out of wastewater which would use more energy.
"How do Make It"?
Yeah, let's use up more fresh water to make amonia. That won't kill us faster.. (facepalm)
Mentioning ammonia fertilizers and climate change without mentioning the detrimental effects that soluble nitrogen fertilizers have on soil organic matter and carbon sequestration seems like a pretty massive oversight.