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Farm in Kenya to produce fossil-free fertilizer on site
- stainablesteel 3y agothis sounds awesome, i hope it remains viable. would love to see something like this scale
- Y_Y 3y ago> The Kenya Nut Company, near Nairobi, will be the first farm in the world to produce fertilizer, on site, that’s free of fossil fuels. Hardly. They're just using a new ammonia synthesis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_fertilizer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_fertilizer
- pstuart 3y agoIt's using solar energy as input, where's the fossil fuels? This development is exciting and hopefully spreads everywhere. Farmers being able to make their own fertilizer (at least on the nitrogen side), is a huge win.
- maxbond 3y agoWithout commenting on the merits of this technique, composting is as old as the hills and doesn't necessarily involve fossil fuels.
- sparrowInHand 3y agoIts also doesent scale. Medieval farming for industrial societies gave us the atrocities of WW2 including Lebensraum.
- hedora 3y agoWhat? The Germans pioneered modern fertilizer production in the 1890s-1910s.
- pjc50 3y agoWW2 could not have happened without Haber ammonia .. for explosives.
- laurencerowe 3y agoThe Industrial Revolution couldn’t have happened without the Agricultural Revolution that preceded and accompanied it, freeing up workers for industry. In medieval times most of the population were farmers by necessity. In the UK, output per acre tripled and the proportion of the population in farming went from 60% to 20% in 1840. And the UK was still almost entirely self sufficient at this time, food imports only became substantial in the late 1800s. Similar changes happened across Europe, though timing varied by country with the spread of industrialisation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolut...
- maxbond 3y agoThe biosphere seemed to scale quite a bit before we invented synthetic fertilizers. I don't think it's so much a problem of composting not scaling as much as our supply chains being wasteful and linear. Again, not commenting on the merits of this technology, I just think it's not correct to say that composting can't scale.
- pstuart 3y agoComposting has value too -- I'm a fan of permaculture. But as noted elsewhere, this scales well and becomes one tool of many.
- hedora 3y agoComposting is to atmospheric nitrogen fixing (this type of process) as recycling is to mining. Before people could pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere, wars were fought over guano deposits, etc. At this point, the majority of nitrogen in human biomass comes from the Haber-Bosch process. (I’m not arguing against composting, to be clear!)
- mym1990 3y agoFarmers have been able to do this for a very long time, but the process is very inefficient and messy when done at scale. Certainly these are good strides forward though!
- walleeee 3y agoSolar panels cannot currently be manufactured, distributed or repaired at any serious scale without fossil fuels.
- throwaway5752 3y agoWhile that is true, it is misleading. If you can use a fixed quantity of fossil fuels to generate many decades of carbon free energy, the change to the overall lifecycle carbon requirements are very different. Just like in algorithms, making it an O(1) rather than O(n) solution, even with a large constant factor, can make an enormous difference over time.
- walleeee 3y agoYour point is also true. I would contest the notion that mine is misleading, given that the parent asks, "where are the fossil fuels?"
- throwaway5752 3y agoFair point! I don't think transportation, manufacture, or extraction ultimately require fossil fuels. Most of the energy inputs are fungible between fossil fuel or renewable. I agree with you right now but that is not a permanent role for fossil fuels. I think input processing (redox) and plastics will be the most persistent. But overall non haber-bosch ammonia is going to reduce co2 emissions and should be celebrated.
- walleeee 3y agoWhile in principle I agree fossil fuels aren't required, in practice it is much more difficult to convert transportation, manufacture and extraction than most realize Also suspect modern agriculture's conviction that the crop is an empty vessel requiring synthetic fertilizer is long overdue for reconsideration. Organic ag can be as productive as industrial ag, at far less energy/materials cost, but it will require much more human effort. While this is a very serious tradeoff to make I would argue it is worthwhile in the long run.
- leblancfg 3y agoHistory tidbit: before the Haber process was discovered, most commercial fertilizer was calcium cyanamide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_cyanamide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_cyanamide) as a downstream product from calcium carbide – one of the first industrial chemistry processes. In the late 1800s - early 1900s this was done along many riverside cities in Eastern US and Canada, because of cheap hydro power generated by dams.
- actionfromafar 3y agoHow did they produce the nitrogen gas?
- contravariant 3y agoJust open a window I suppose.
- mlinhares 3y agoI LOLed hard at this.
- blueflow 3y agoSecond paragraph in the linked Wikipedia article.
- soperj 3y agoDon't know why you're being downvoted when you have provided the answer. "In their search for a new process for producing cyanides for cyanide leaching of gold, Frank and Caro discovered the ability of alkaline earth carbides to absorb atmospheric nitrogen at high temperatures."
- philipkglass 3y agoI didn't downvote, but the Wikipedia article does not explain how nitrogen unmixed with oxygen was obtained from the atmosphere. This 1913 book on calcium cyanamide manufacturing explains: https://archive.org/details/cyanamidmanufact00pran/page/4/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/cyanamidmanufact00pran/page/4/mo... Nitrogen is obtained either by fractional distillation of liquid air, or by means of the copper oxide process. In the latter, air is passed through a red-hot mass of finely divided copper, suspended in asbestos or other inert material. The copper combines with the oxygen and allows the nitrogen to pass through. The copper oxide is easily recovered for use by reduction in situ with a suitable gas, such as natural gas. The nitrogen used must be pure and dry, otherwise, at high temperatures, there is destruction of the carbon pencils, and of calcium carbide, according to the following reactions ...
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoThis is actually exciting. Converting carbon free energy (such as solar and wind) into chemical energy is I think one of the more promising approaches. One of the big challenges of solar and wind is matching instantaneous supply with instantaneous demand. By converting it to chemical energy, you can basically take the solar output that you get and use it. If you get more, you produce more, if you get less, you produce less. It is adaptable to the supply.
- elil17 3y agoThe title should really say ammonia fertilizer. Of course compost is also fertilizer, and farms have been producing that on site for a long, long time. That said, huge win!
- lasermike026 3y agoBook: The Alchemy of Air
- User23 3y agoIn the USA we used to just spray sludge, but that's largely been banned. A shame because it works really well and scales with population.
- stainablesteel 3y agowhy was this banned?
- icegreentea2 3y agoYou're spreading (often) human waste over a field. There are a lot more pathogen risks this way.
- bluGill 3y agoOnly if it isn't treated carefully. Spray it on in fall after harvest and you are probably fine. however spray right before harvest and pathogens will still be alive. a month before harvest is often when plants need the most nutrients, and that isn't enough time for any pathogens to die.
- isilofi 3y agoSome pathogens simply do not die in any useful timeframe, e.g. anthrax or tetanus. Those lurk in the soil for years, decades and even centuries. The only safe measure is heat-treatment, but that is usually too expensive. In particular, it is more expensive than just using artificial fertilizer.
- bequanna 3y agoAre you talking about fertilizing with human waste?
- pkaye 3y agoWhat about Milorganite? Its the sludge from treated waste water that is heated to kill pathogens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milorganite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milorganite
- usrnm 3y agoWell, all farms in the world used to produce their own fertilizer without using fossil fuels. It's called 'manure'. Just nitpicking
- MichaelZuo 3y agoYeah, it's definitely a pretty odd headline, considering many millions of farmers use the good ol' fashioned method to this day.
- stainablesteel 3y agojust shit in a field bro
- hecatia 3y agoSeriously. My mom told me that cow shit that were accumilating in places they were were picked up in a wagon and carried to a designated place to place livestock shit and maybe cover it with something organic (would still smell bad) and leave it there for some time so that shit turn into dirt, soil or something that can be used as fertilizer. I don't remember how long it has to stay before it becomes fertilizer.
- 7373737373 3y agoHow much agricultural land can 1 ton of ammonia fertilize?
- cannonpalms 3y agoThis will depend entirely on the requirements of the crop. You won't get a generic answer per unit area.
- hedora 3y agoIt also depends on soil properties. However, 100-200 lbs of fertilizer per acre is somewhat reasonable, so it’s probably on the order of 10-100 acres per ton of nitrogen atoms. Source (this is an article about measuring available nitrogen, and their examples are in the 100-200 lbs per acre range): https://www.agry.purdue.edu/Ext/corn/news/timeless/AssessAvailableN.html https://www.agry.purdue.edu/Ext/corn/news/timeless/AssessAva...
- Mistletoe 3y ago> A 200-bushel corn crop requires about 200 to 250 pounds nitrogen per acre. So that’s about 240 lbs per acre of anhydrous ammonia. https://www.rs.uky.edu/soil/calculators/mult_fert.php https://www.rs.uky.edu/soil/calculators/mult_fert.php
- delecti 3y agoThe other comment is probably right, that this varies widely, but getting a vague order of magnitude is still useful. From some amateur googling, it seems that an acre requires on the order of 100 lbs/year (50-300lbs, though the higher figures seem to also include things other than just nitrogen/ammonia). So 1 ton/day (assuming metric tonnage), would be in the range of 8000 acres/year, though with obviously large error bars.
- 7373737373 3y agoThis being about 32km^2, combined with this: https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/9582/how-many-people-can-you-feed-per-square-kilometer-of-farmland https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/9582/how-m... and ignoring the "round-robin" nature of the per-day restriction, it seems this might help to feed 50,000 people per such installation
- purpleblue 3y agoWhen I read articles like this, I can totally understand China and India's argument as to why they won't or don't prioritize fossil fuel consumption. The West has spent centuries modernizing itself to the point where there is a vast gap between the West and the rest of the world. Now that the West has a huge advantage, they want to start imposing moral arguments on the 3rd world nations as to why they should abide by the West's new set of moral codes, which handcuff the progress that 3rd world countries can make. This feels like another example of where I bet it would be cheaper to do it in other ways (besides using Russian ammonia) but they decided to try the "green" way. It also feels a lot like how Monsanto tricked Indian farmers into using their seeds which required Roundup and then became indentured servants for the rest of their lives because of the financial handcuffs put on them. So I can completely sympathize why many poorer countries can see all these environmental moral edicts as being ways to keep them oppressed and tricked into not making progress independently from the West.
- elil17 3y ago>It also feels a lot like how Monsanto tricked Indian farmers into using their seeds which required Roundup and then became indentured servants for the rest of their lives because of the financial handcuffs put on them. I think it's actually the exact opposite of this. The farm now has a fertilizer factory that produces fertilizer for free. They are no longer reliant on buying ammonia from big companies.
- hannob 3y agoYou seem to confuse "physics" with "moral arguments". They are profoundly different.
- newfriend 3y ago> The West has spent centuries modernizing itself to the point where there is a vast gap between the West and the rest of the world. The West has spent centuries inventing and iterating on technology which is now available to the rest of the world, and has experienced how environmental hazards are created, which we want to avoid repeating. The West also handcuffs itself with environmental morality (see infrastructure development in China vs the US). We have experience with pollution and want to avoid countries and continents of 1b+ people making the Earth uninhabitable.
- spenrose 3y agoA number of commenters are pointing out that natural fertilizers exist. That is true. It is also true that artificial fertilizers were invented because around 1900 humanity ran out of biologically accessible ("fixed") nitrogen that it could convert to crops. The key nitrogen atom in roughly half of the amino acids in your body was part of a nitrogen-nitrogen pair floating in the atmosphere until it was fixed in a factory. If all the factories making fertilizers shut down tomorrow, there would be mass famine.
- cornholio 3y agoTo add to this: livestock make up 62% of the world's mammal biomass; humans account for 34%; and wild mammals are just 4%. Humanity, and especially the meat eating subspecies, is just a side effect of the Haber-Bosch reaction.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- d4nt 3y ago“Subspecies” feels a bit othering. Humans have been eating meat since Homo erectus (about 2M years).
- riedel 3y agoNo sustained increase in zooarchaeological evidence for carnivory after the appearance of Homo erectus [1]. [1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2115540119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2115540119
- soperj 3y ago> The evolution of these traits is commonly linked to a major dietary shift involving increased consumption of animal tissues. I've never heard of this linkage. I've always heard it was on account of cooking the meat, rather than eating more of it.
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- hannob 3y agoIt may come as a surprise to people (it certainly was a surprise to me), but actually there was a quite substantial renewable ammonia industry in the past in some countries, e.g. in Iceland and Norway. It eventually couldn't compete against cheap fossil gas though... See e.g.: https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4079/3/2/11 https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4079/3/2/11
- aragonite 3y agoI wonder how much more expensive this process is than the conventional approach. Apparently 'five times as expensive' according to Vaclav Smil (who is very pessimistic about rapid decarbonization) in How the World Works (2022): > In terms of the second category, as I will detail in the next chapter, synthesis of the ammonia needed to produce nitrogenous fertilizers now depends heavily on natural gas as the source of hydrogen. Hydrogen could be produced by the decomposition (electrolysis) of water instead, but this route remains nearly five times as expensive as when the element is derived from abundant and inexpensive methane — and we have yet to create a mass-scale hydrogen industry.
- wolfi1 3y agothe absurdity is, there would be enough nitrogen in waste water, but bacteria in the sewage plants release it into air
- sillypuddy 3y agoMilorganite is exactly that, it's composed of heat-dried microbes that have digested the organic material in wastewater. It's manufactured by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, which captures waste water from the metropolitan Milwaukee area and uses naturally occurring microbes to digest the nutrients. After the organic matter has been consumed, the cleaned water is returned to Lake Michigan and the resulting material is dried and marketed as Milorganite®.
- eppp 3y agoThe problem with human waste is the concentration of heavy metals as I understand it. We are the very top of the food chain and we accumulate all of the heavy metals from below which then gets further concentrated in our dried waste.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoThe phrasing is odd - is methane more abundant and less expensive than water? I get the subtext that there’s something else in the process that drives cost, but at least in that out of context quote it isn’t obvious what it is. I would assume it’s electricity, however using solar which has a lifespan of 25+ years seems like it obviates that.
- ww520 3y agoKenya has an amazing run in economic growth over the years. The key was their heavy investment in agriculture and related technologies. With food security, the other aspects of the economy simply flourish.
- interestica 3y agoThe dream is still human waste diversion and treatment (separation, treatment, reuse). There are a couple small-scale projects looking at feasibility. Right now the norm is to combine wastes, add it to drinking water, and then spend a lot of money to get the water out of it again.
- jack_riminton 3y agoFrom a first principles perspective, would I be able to grow enough food for me from the waste fertiliser from me? my intuition is that there wouldn't be enough
- searine 3y agoThere is a reason dairy farmers have to buy fertilizer. Most dairy farms are very efficient at collecting all the waste the cows produce. They then empty the pits into a tanker truck and spray/inject it onto the fields. It goes a long way and helps complete the cycle, but your intuition is right, it alone is not enough.
- bluGill 3y agoDepends on many factors. If you are growing all your food on 1000 acres (only food for you, not selling any for cash) you can do this, and your decedents can continue until the earth/sun dies (assuming your family doesn't increase in size which is the normal thing to happen). If you are trying to do the same on 10 square feet you have a much more intensive operation and probably need fertilizer because not all processes are 100% efficient. Some of the nitrogen in your waste won't make it back to the plants. There are other micro nutrients that plants need that won't make it back either.
- sillypuddy 3y agoAre you talking about milorganite?
- interestica 3y agoThat's brilliant. I'd forgotten about it. https://www.milorganite.com/what-is-milorganite https://www.milorganite.com/what-is-milorganite So they use the sewage from the existing treatment system, let microbes process it all, and then extract/dry those microbes. I was more thinking about needing means to rethink our toilet/sewage system entirely with a focus on initial separation.
- photochemsyn 3y agoThis approach (eliminating fossil fuels from the nitrogen fertilizer pipeline) will inevitably become the global norm. For Africa in particular, it's the only plausible route to long-term food stability as there simply isn't enough fossil fuel available to allow Africa to industrialize (and if there was, we'd be doubling the rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere). Africa has the opportunity to go directly from pre-industrial agrarian economy to a renewable energy-powered industrial economy.
- ruffrey 3y agoFor those interested in farming and inputs to farming, I recommend looking into "No-Till" farming and other regenerative soil building practices. What is being rediscovered is how much cheaper it is to build soil health, which in a few years brings yields up to conventional ag. Methods such as increased soil organic matter through cover crops, reduced tillage to keep mycorrhizal fungi, microbes, and earth worm trails intact. These practices are being shown by ag research universities in the US to greatly reduce the need for inputs (fertilizer) almost entirely in many cases. That is because the bioavailability of nutrients is far higher when plants work with beneficial microbes to acquire nutrients - the way plants evolved was not in tilled soil. And tilled soil becomes hardened and erodes, while untilled or lightly subsoiled earth allows moisture retention and deeper water penetration. While not a rejection of modern ag practices, no-till does take aim at some of the conventional expensive "wisdom" (namely, tillage, heavy fertilizer use, heavy pesticide+herbicide use).
- bluGill 3y agoModern ag is all no-till and low-till and has been since the 1980s. The old fashioned plow is non-existent anymore. Even when a farmer does till, it is a with a tool that is rarely even called a plow (there are several types of tillage tools in common use with different properties, but none turn the soil over or exchange soil layers) Modern ag can build topsoil - sometimes at rates as high as 1mm/year!