[HN Gopher] Catching Lightning in a Bottle
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Catching Lightning in a Bottle
Author : geox
Score : 39 points
Date : 2021-12-19 17:27 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arpa-e.energy.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (arpa-e.energy.gov)
| stevespang wrote:
| Their process appears to require injection into irrigation water,
| now how many crops are being irrigated this way ? Huge farms of
| corn, wheat, milo, maize, sorghum, none of them use trickle or
| drip irrigation, a bit more may use flood irrigation - - - but
| the vast majority rely on simple rainfall ... This process more
| suited for high value horticultural crops, or in Israel where
| drip is intensive and common for most all their crops.
| darquomiahw wrote:
| This type of process has already been developed industrially:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkeland%E2%80%93Eyde_process
|
| The trouble is that it is inefficient and will ultimately release
| some NOx compounds into the atmosphere since the conversion rate
| is not 100% to HNO3. I'm surprised there is not a single mention
| of this process in their paper.
| elcritch wrote:
| The process you mention is for a "hot plasma" formed by
| electric sparks. Presumably this companies technology uses
| "cold plasma" aka non-thermal plasma which is significantly
| more efficient and more selective toward HNO3. Heres a good
| review paper:
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42768-021-00074-z
|
| Here's another interesting one:
| https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.9b04997
|
| There is still some NOx production, but likely low enough
| enough concentrations to be filtered.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I'm sure there are some optimizations that can be done on the
| process but yeah, it isn't new. I don't think the NOx issue is
| significant because you can sequester them, but it does add to
| the expense and lower the efficiency(unless you have a source
| of animal urine and can use the urea maybe?).
|
| Is the efficiency difference between it and the Haber-Bosch
| process small enough to be made up by the lack of
| transportation?
|
| I wonder if the nitric acid is a benefit in places with
| alkaline soil and water chemistries?
| aaron695 wrote:
| The idea farmers/local communities can just install a Haber-Bosch
| process onsite using 'solar' is fucking mentally ill.
|
| So this magic allows it to be done locally. Wow, that would be
| amazing, society changing.
|
| Also emits no CO2, then that's a fucking mentally ill wank to
| further con the envro cultists as part of the rapture around CO2.
|
| The only way this would be plausible would be by putting it
| straight into the water on site you might skip significant steps
| needed normally for nation wide transportation or something
| something. If this was true then this would also exist using
| normal power from the grid.
|
| Solar panels add nothing, a sure sigh of fake news. This 'magic'
| might be implemented later around solar panels for fields or
| locations where the grid did not exist.
|
| How would the amortization costs of the solar panels work? How do
| you ramp up and ramp down, the nitrogen must be timed.
|
| > When you see a lightning storm pass through an area the next
| day you'll notice that the plants will be really green and that's
| because lightning breaks down the nitrogen in the air and rain
| water brings it to the soil as nitrate this is natural fertilizer
|
| This shit people believe is mind blowing. Left field thought
| maybe it's the rain that made it greener. Lightning is a small
| amount of nitrogen, and again the nitrogen should be timed.
| _Microft wrote:
| Great to see that making ammonia production more environmentally
| friendly is actively being worked on from different angles. There
| was another process announced recently that produced ammonia from
| supplied nitrogen (which would still be separated from air as I
| understood) in an electrolysis cell. These are links for this
| other approach:
|
| Paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg2371
|
| Article on the paper: https://newatlas.com/energy/green-ammonia-
| phosphonium-produc...
|
| Submission here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29427914
| stevespang wrote:
| . . . .and that process requires nitrogen pressurized up to
| ~280 psi
| jakozaur wrote:
| Original link is just PR. I prefer the company paper:
| https://www.nitricity.co/_files/ugd/142f34_bc5fa8b90ac647dab...
|
| "For the past century, nitrogen fertilizer has been produced as
| ammonia (NH3) in Haber-Bosch facilities often situated very far
| from farmers who need and use fertilizer. State-of-the-art Haber-
| Bosch factories require hydrogen production via coal or methane
| reforming and use high-pressure and temperature reactors to
| transform hydrogen and nitrogen gas into ammonia. "
|
| "The distributed production and fertilization with nitric acid is
| relatively underexplored. Known nitric acid production methods
| require about 3 times more energy per pound of nitrogen than
| ammonia processes."
|
| "In the current study, we focus on a plasma-based production
| process that fixes nitrogen as nitric acid on-site for a plot of
| irrigated processing tomatoes."
| philipkglass wrote:
| This work is interesting in that it may decentralize nitrogen
| fixation. Traditional Haber-Bosch plants can also decarbonize
| ammonia production if they use electrolytic hydrogen produced
| with clean electricity. Some 20th century Haber-Bosch plants
| operated that way with electrolytic hydrogen made via
| hydroelectric power.
| _Microft wrote:
| The company's website is here [0] but I could not find any
| detailed information on their process there. A search term that
| seems to be more useful for that, even though it does not give
| details on _their_ process exactly, seems to be _" ammonia
| fixation non-equilibrium plasma"_
|
| [0] https://www.nitricity.co/
|
| Edit: an article on the Stanford website:
|
| https://suncat.stanford.edu/news/boots-ground-stanford-team-...
|
| Edit2: removed name and information about research of someone who
| seems to be involved with the company because they were not
| mentioned by name on the company website and might appreciate
| their privacy.
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