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Similarly interesting development: "green lightning" electricity + air + ammonium => ammonium nitrate fertilizer
by dogcomplex 2y ago
Similarly interesting development: "green lightning" electricity + air + ammonium => ammonium nitrate fertilizer
- canadiantim 2y agosource?
- dogcomplex 2y agohttps://www.greenlightning.ag/ https://www.greenlightning.ag/ "$.04 per lb of N. $.70 per lb N is about standard currently for uan32" according to a random redditor (lost link, pulling from second-hand Signal chat history) Appears to use this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkeland%E2%80%93Eyde_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkeland%E2%80%93Eyde_process Highly inefficient chemically, and produces salt nitrate, but energy is cheap enough it seems to beat out offsite transport ``` ~250kg/ salt nitrate per ha ha farm feeds comfortably 10 ppl year round. 25kg salt per person/yr 12.5kg nitrate/person per year 60 g per kWh 1kWh/.06kg*12.5kg 208kWh/person/yr (less than 1 300W solar panel pp) estimate $0.1/kWh $20 e- per year per person best case ``` All I've got on it. Needs Potassium and Phosphorus supplements for ideal fertilizer still. Very neat though, and seemingly a sizable step economically - especially where fertilizer costs are the farming bottleneck. Can almost make self-contained plant + solar + water collection + harvesting bot + green lightning units that grow indefinitely without any inputs but air, rain and sun.