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> more troll lunacy The Haber-Bosch process requires nitrogen pulled from petrochemicals (there are no other large sources of nitrogen we can use at scale) to
by tb_technical 4y ago
> more troll lunacy
The Haber-Bosch process requires nitrogen pulled from petrochemicals (there are no other large sources of nitrogen we can use at scale) to feed a large portion of the worlds population. We literally *CANNOT* go back to guano - people would starve to death.
Edit: I made a grave error in the above. I misremembered nitrogen as the scarce material in the reaction, when in fact it's hydrogen. We get hydrogen from hydrocarbons that we then use for synthesizing fertilizer.
I'm going to leave the above error so future humans can laugh at my idiocy.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bittercynic 4y ago"The Haber process consumes 3–5% of the world's natural-gas production (around 1–2% of the world's energy supply)"[1] Seems like we could cut out most fossil-fuel consumption without making any sacrifice on this front. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Economic_and_environmental_aspects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Economic_and_env...
- tb_technical 4y ago
- kortex 4y agoEven if we don't figure out green hydrogen for some time, I'd be okay with diverting some amount of fossil fuel consumption to essential chemical processes, like Haber-Bosh ammonia and plastics, while cutting drastically the systems that don't strictly need hydrocarbons for their purpose. Hydrocarbons are wildly useful chemical precursors, it's kind of a shame they are mostly used just for burning.