Device uses wind to create ammonia out of air

Interesting idea.

So, farms are definitely setup already to accomplish this. Most farms have moved to central pivots for irrigation, and they already inject fertilizer into the pivot [1]. If fertilization could be generated onsite, then you could theoretically have everything plumbed together to "just work" without much intervention or shipping of chemicals.

[1] https://www.farmprogress.com/farming-equipment/chemical-fert...

A somewhat passive fertiliser generator scattered around your fields is also known as a "cow" and a "chicken".

Until big fertilizer lobbies to make decentralized fertilizer illegal. Insert national security, wrong hands blah blah

I mean, the extended headline suggests it is producing fuel, which is wrong.

Would it be suitable for Mars atmosphere?

https://www.liquium.nz/ is working on reducing the energy (a lot) required for the Haber-Bosch process.

+1 "alchemy of air" is a great read. The angle that would be most interesting to the HN crowd is that it exposed me to how much innovation was happening in chemistry in this pre-WWI era. Reminds me a bit of silicon valley.

The also a fascinating look at how the inventors got heavily caught up in WWI and WWII due to being in Germany and how tied up their industry became with government. Interesting to reflect on in current times.

Truly a great book.

Idk but soil micro-organisms do break N2 to make ammonia so there sure exists a pathway that just implies catalysis at low temperature.

Sibling commenters mention industrial uses, sustainability means far more than just cars or electricity, part of why the focus on electric/cars is so short-sighted (never mind the issues electricity distribution brings to the table)...

But for cars/electricity, this is potentially excellent news (assuming longevity and cost of the operating equipment). The distribution costs are much lower than Hydrogen, and it could be used easily to power existing Hydrogen fleets. I'd wager this even makes electricity distribution easier, as ammonia batteries could be relatively stable and easily distributed as well.

Ammonia is very common in industrial applications.

No small feat!

this observation is present in the 3rd paragraph of TFA

Yes? There's already a cottage industry trying to do exactly that?

The problem is getting enough co2, as it's not particularly concentrated in our atmosphere. So the main ways they go about it are big fans, which is tons of energy, capturing at the source (in smokestacks, etc) which requires complex transport and management, or growing plants and pyrolysing the biomass.

The fundamental theory behind it is quite simple, it's really more of a logistics problem.

Most ammonia is produced via the Haber process. It takes nitrogen from the air and hydrogen from natural gas and combines them into ammonia. It uses an iron catalyst. This process emits significant CO2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

Do you think the first lab produced ammonia was also made at current hourly production rates?

Alternatively, you are looking at a scale model and asking, "what is this, a school for ants?!"

Maybe we should learn to do things in a new way then spend a few decades rolling them out?

I doubt much. We've been pumping billions of tons of co2 and only slightly raised co2 and that's a small small portion of the air in the atmosphere.

It's 80% of the atmosphere. You're not going to run out. What might be a risk is dumping it, nitrogenation of rivers is already a problem in places.

We already make ammonia from the nitrogen in the air.

>> The process can be powered simply by ambient wind

>the ultimate energy source appears to be the wind

Seems like you are agreeing that, that is how chemistry works.

The was an article here a while back about the production of propane from water and CO2 (via a catalyst and electricity). I think "renewable fossil fuels" are the only way we can handle the fluctuating production of renewable energy and get the density of fuel we need for storage, especially mobile storage like fuel for cars & lorries.

> Related: my personal wistful thinking is,

> AI -> safe deployable fusion

This reminds me of the recent HN referred article on Cargo Cults

> produce NH_3 fuel from N-gas-compound with H_2O vapor

At room temperature! That's the interesting bit.

And many of them are incredibly useful. Take, for example, the burning of fuel. Or eating and digesting.

Hopefully, one day they will turn large amounts of cheap energy into valuable chemical feed stock and fuels. When you think about it, aluminum producers are doing something similar.

I hear there is a small fortune to be made in this technology. First, start with a large fortune.

This fits with most VC backed companies. Back in 30 minutes with my showHN post!

This is under-explained, isn't it? The reaction has to be endothermic, so it must be taking in ambient heat. Would be useful if someone dug up the actual paper rather than the press release.

One aspect of these miracle solutions to watch out for: the catalyst is often very expensive and has a finite lifespan.

Edit: actual paper https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.ads4443

Edit: got to the bit in the paper where they describe the process; "contact electrification". This appears to be an electrostatic phenomenon like tribocharging (the old "rub a balloon on your hair" trick). Water droplets hitting the catalyst generates enough potential at the surface to trigger a reaction. So I suppose the energy input is actually in the spray+pump of the experiment, or wind in the outdoor example.

The resulting output is extremely dilute. Raising the concentration is likely to consume more energy for generating an actually useful output.

The energy comes from the sun, without it the atmosphere would freeze and this device wouldn't work.

For our purposes solar power is effectively perpetual motion.

The power could come from anything (solar, wind, wave) other than the dominant current source for all ammonia, the Haber Process. TFA mentions this in the headline? Could this be done before by just using water+air+solar, yes it could. Frankly, this is just a proof of concept and any commercial solution would be different for scaling reasons.

Professor Aldo Rossa started popularizing a lot of this in the 80s. https://patents.google.com/patent/US4107277A/en

Having something other than a fossil fuel source for the most common fertilizer in the world seems useful. Also, it's easier, cheaper and safer to ship ammonia around than Hydrogen since it's a low pressure liquid and more energy dense. People have been talking about using it as a shipping fuel for decades.

Gasoline as a fuel is an absurdly stupid idea, dangerous to handle, toxic, and has a tendency to burst into flame!

I'm surmising that it could be a useful first step towards converting the atmospheric CO2 into something easier to store long-term.

So the ammonia doesn't need to be useful in itself, but only to be able to be converted on-site to something more storable (more stable, liquefaction at lower pressure or higher temperature, and so on), or alternatively something more useful that could displace other standard CO2-intensive industrial processes.

What is so dangerous about it compared to lets say a gasoline engine converted to use LPG or Methane? There are many of those in Europe where I live.