Device uses wind to create ammonia out of air
122 comments
·January 16, 2025dizzant
cogman10
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
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
> 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
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
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
A somewhat passive fertiliser generator scattered around your fields is also known as a "cow" and a "chicken".
wcoenen
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.
xenonite
The cows also “stack shit up”, building a thick layer of soil: “carbon sequestration”.
All in all, cows are around zero emissions when held outside and fed grass only.
dredmorbius
And distribute it across acreage.
SoftTalker
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.
xenonite
You don't need soy or corn if you have cows on grass instead: much less carbon dioxide and more nutritious.
darth_avocado
Until big fertilizer lobbies to make decentralized fertilizer illegal. Insert national security, wrong hands blah blah
gopalv
> Insert national security, wrong hands blah blah
That isn't a big reach.
Ammonium nitrate is already controlled in several parts of the world
themaninthedark
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....
cogman10
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
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.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos
[flagged]
dylan604
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
That is an exaggeration. The only time Monsanto did anything was cases of intentional mixing.
9rx
> 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?
AtlasBarfed
I mean, you can vertically scale these, right? It isn't solar powered.
Also while I understand the local delivery aspect, why waste arable soil on this, use desert. Hm, do you need moist air? They were testing it near water. Maybe on the Pacific side of the Rockies? That air is moist enough to drop feet of snow at once.
blueflow
I mean, the extended headline suggests it is producing fuel, which is wrong.
darksaints
Ammonia has a lot of uses, and fuel is one of them.
gus_massa
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
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
https://www.liquium.nz/ is working on reducing the energy (a lot) required for the Haber-Bosch process.
trestacos
+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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
1/3 the energy density of diesel and way more dangerous to lives and property.
smaudet
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.
hnmullany
Here is an overview I wrote of next generation methods for ammonia synthesis:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/climatetech-134-de-carbonizin...
(FWIW - there are many many promising lab results that turn out to be false positives because the researchers did a bad job of controlling potential contamination in their ammonia measurements. Low concentrations of ammonia are everywhere, and you have to do a really good job making sure you're not measuring background levels vs. what you think you're producing)
selimthegrim
Didn’t a group from KAUST falsify Zare’s results about microdroplets a few years ago and show that they weren’t anything special
ada1981
How do we create this right now?
What are the costs for the catalysts and how long do they last?
Those sorts of questions feel important to understand.
Tagbert
Most ammonia is produced via the Haber process. It takes nitrogen from the air and hydrogen from natural gas and combines them into ammonia. It uses an iron catalyst. This process emits significant CO2.
adrian_b
Currently hydrogen made from natural gas is the cheapest, but the Haber process could equally well use hydrogen made from water electrolysis using solar/wind energy.
In that case there will be no production of CO2.
The only reason why this is not done yet is because avoiding the production of CO2 would raise the cost of ammonia, then the costs of fertilizers and various other chemical substances, including explosives, which would trigger a cascade of price increases in food and in many other products.
gs17
> but the Haber process could equally well use hydrogen made from water electrolysis using solar/wind energy.
You can also use methane pyrolysis, which outputs solid carbon instead of CO2. It's supposed to be somewhere in the middle of cost between steam methane reforming and water electrolysis.
hammock
So they invented a (chemical) bean plant/rhizobium? Or Nitrobacter. AKA atmospheric nitrogen fixer
btbuildem
No small feat!
maxrmk
I'm vaguely amused by the headline of "requires no external power" right above the image of it sitting on top of (and plugged in to) a giant portable battery.
cyberax
> The process can be powered simply by ambient wind to pass the water vapor through the mesh.
That's not how chemistry works. You need to input external energy to produce ammonia out of water and nitrogen. It's the law of energy conservation.
In this case, the ultimate energy source appears to be the wind. It tears off microdroplets of water from larger water bodies, so the energy is stored in the surface tension of microdroplets.
Suppafly
>> The process can be powered simply by ambient wind
>the ultimate energy source appears to be the wind
Seems like you are agreeing that, that is how chemistry works.
aaroninsf
Related: my personal wistful thinking is,
AI -> safe deployable fusion -> power for desalination and exactly this sort of thing.
In particular I daydream about use of "free" power to perform carbon sequestration back into liquid hydrocarbon fuels for existing ICE etc. infrastructure...voila, no delay to retool civilization while getting down to the business of bringing carbon back under 400 ppm.
worik
> Related: my personal wistful thinking is,
> AI -> safe deployable fusion
This reminds me of the recent HN referred article on Cargo Cults
rotexo
I interpreted that causality as AI leading to deployment of carbon-neutral energy, then when the AI bubble bursts, we’ve pushed carbon-neutral electricity sources off the learning curve cliff and it is available for cheap without the original consumers needing it. From that perspective, it could be any carbon neutral electricity (fusion, fission, enhanced geothermal, super-deep geothermal etc.). I could be misinterpreting the parent comment.
alexchamberlain
The was an article here a while back about the production of propane from water and CO2 (via a catalyst and electricity). I think "renewable fossil fuels" are the only way we can handle the fluctuating production of renewable energy and get the density of fuel we need for storage, especially mobile storage like fuel for cars & lorries.
einpoklum
"Researchers produce NH_3 fuel from N-gas-compound with H_2O vapor"
Doesn't sound so exciting.
But, sniping aside - is there a potential for cheap enough production in abundant enough amounts to use safely in machine engines? Or as grid-level storage medium for solar energy? The very transformation is neat, but the application is what would be interesting.
pjc50
> produce NH_3 fuel from N-gas-compound with H_2O vapor
At room temperature! That's the interesting bit.
adrian_b
In TFA the alternative methods for making ammonia are mentioned.
One such method, which already works at room temperature for combining hydrogen with nitrogen into ammonia, uses electricity together with a platinum-gold catalyst and it has a 13% energetic efficiency.
The methods described here uses cheaper materials and the authors hope that some time in the future it might reach a better energetic efficiency.
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.