4 ms·
Abundant solar means you can just rip the nitrogen right out of the air. Sounds like the cost is in the ballpark already: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/01/
by maxerickson 4y ago
Abundant solar means you can just rip the nitrogen right out of the air.
Sounds like the cost is in the ballpark already:
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/01/19/pulling-fertilizer-out-of-thin-air-with-pv/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/01/19/pulling-fertilizer-ou...
- colechristensen 4y agoIt all just comes out of the air. High temperature, high pressure, air, hydrogen, and a catalyst. Methane is just a cheaper source of hydrogen than water. Hard to tell if this startup is really something because all you can find is articles built from press releases. The part about transportation is mostly moot, in the Midwest the fertilizer plants are local, there was one like twenty miles away from the farm i grew up on. Decoupling from the energy markets would be nice, but it’s doubtful anybody really wants to become a pricecutting commodity here. Farm inputs have the tendency to be as expensive as farmers can afford.
- biorach 4y agoThis is speculative technology, still in early prototype phase
- maxerickson 4y agoSure. The approach is very likely to be viable (we know that electric arcs produce fixed nitrogen), the reason to point to the specific technology is that they think the pricing just about works.
- biorach 4y ago"very likely..." "they think" Until this thing is operating profitably at scale it is unproven