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Where do you think the nitrogen in nitrogen fertilizers comes from? The atmosphere. The key part of the Haber-Bosch process that needs to be replaced is the hyd
by mlindner 1y ago
Where do you think the nitrogen in nitrogen fertilizers comes from? The atmosphere. The key part of the Haber-Bosch process that needs to be replaced is the hydrogen, which could easily be done with on-site electrolysis if needed.
However only 1-2% of global CO2 output is from the fertilizer production industry. Oil use is never going to go away until it is truly gone or too expensive to pump out of the ground. As long as it's cheaper to use fossil fuels for chemical input stock companies elsewhere in the world from where regulations are will do so and that cheaper product will take over the market. It becomes a whack-a-mole of banning products further and further down the industrial pipeline to the point there's no way you can ban products made with fossil fuels.
The way out of this is to make competing methods cheaper. And if electricity gets cheap enough, then electrolysis sourced hydrogen becomes cheaper than fossil fuel sourced hydrogen and then your haber-bosch process will be carbon neutral.
- tonyedgecombe 1y ago>Oil use is never going to go away until it is truly gone or too expensive to pump out of the ground. If we burn all of the fossil fuels available to us then we have are going to have a huge problem growing crops with the resultant climate change.
- mlindner 1y agoThere's many more uses to oil than burning it directly. Much of what is in oil ends up in a landfill (i.e. plastics).