This Molecule Has Saved Billions of Lives, How Do We Make It Without Killing Ourselves?
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Ammonia is extremely useful to us as a crucial ingredient in fertilizers. But producing it also has a significant carbon footprint, which is why scientists have been on the hunt for a way to make ammonia production greener.
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Пікірлер: 585
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@prachayaputtapanasub1113
Жыл бұрын
Yes, I agree with you about the dangerous of NH3 as fuel!!* Safety:💀 Hope they realize what will happen when accidents occur !!! kzread.info/dash/bejne/fYhhlbmTXZWZccY.html In old ammonia car we need to raise awareness of leaking as well!! More over is about Global warming:🌍 I don't think ammonia combustion engine vehicles 🚗,🚤,✈ type is a good IDEA!!Burning NH3 can cause NxO and NO gas, (However for power plant with NxO gasses scrubber system might be OK, If they prepare air filter Gas mask as emergency PPE incase of leaking!!) The NxO gasses such as Nitrous oxide can cause more global warming than CO2 300 time and live upto 144 years!! both NH3 and NO gas are toxic, especially when accidents occur.
BTW: Aged urine was a source of ammonia for cleaning wool after it was woven. That job was what a "fuller" did for a living. They poured fermented urine in a big tub, put in the wool and hopped in to stomp it with their feet. The stomping and ammonia got the lanolin out of the wool making it soft and fluffy to be nice and warm.
@prakash_77
Жыл бұрын
Sounds very gross 🤮
@nigeljohnson9820
Жыл бұрын
It is a nonsense to put artificially made ammonia on fields, while pouring ammonium salts into the sewage system, to poison our rivers and sea water.
@KristenRowenPliske
Жыл бұрын
Neat & disgusting at the same time.
@1.4142
Жыл бұрын
So wetting the bed makes it softer?
@Amocles
Жыл бұрын
I eat so many vegetables that any piece of ground that I pee on instantly turns into like a green patch... Real talk I think it must be nitrogen or something.
Worth a mention that ammonia is easy to transport as it becomes a liquid at achievable temperature and pressure. I'm old enough to remember ladies carrying "smelling salts" to revive others that had fainted. :) Sure in high concentrations not good but it has a smell that's impossible to ignore. It's also highly soluble in water so a leak is fairly easy to deal with.
@MissSpaz
Жыл бұрын
I remember in the mid 00s, when I was 16 or so, my best friend got her hands on smelling salts. Still dunno where she got it, same girl came home with an entire canister of laughing gas one time. But yeah- that is absolutely a smell you NEVER forget.
@Sniperboy5551
Жыл бұрын
@Miss Spaz It’s pretty easy to but cartridges of laughing gas (nitrous oxide) as it’s used in whipped cream. It’s legal to buy for the purpose of making whipped cream, but it’s not like they make sure that’s what you’re using it for. Many head shops sell packages of whipped cream cartridges.
@J.A.huscher
Жыл бұрын
@@Sniperboy5551 does this mean it's possible to get high from inhaling gallons of straight whipped cream
One huge point in favor of the Haber Bosch Process is just how cheap the required catalyst is - it's mostly based on iron, containing small amounts of other cheap metal oxides as promoters. If a successor process to Haber Bosch wants to have any chance at viability it must have a catalyst superior in price to performance. To add insult to injury even if a catalyst of superior qualities is available - the Haber Bosch Process scales exceptionally well on an industrial level. For the time being it is my opinion that the most realistic chance to advance the nitrogen fixation is to "clean up" the classic Haber Bosch Process, mostly by addressing the steam reforming process that is currently the main source of hydrogen, but unfortunately that is another deep chemical rabbit hole in its own right.
@user-ql6dq6zg6k
Ай бұрын
Could be cleaned up by electrolytically derived hydrogen, using solar or wind power and storing the hydrogen long term.
@minklmank
Ай бұрын
@@user-ql6dq6zg6k the amount of hydrogen needed, and the amount of power required are insane. Unfortunately there is a lot more to it than rigging up a Dozend wind / solar generators next to an ammonia plant and sticking some electrodes in the faucet.
The band *Sabaton* has written a song called *'Father'* dedicated to *Fritz Haber* , contemplating his historic significance and controversy because he is know as the *"Father of artifical fertilizers"* , thus saving maybe millions from famine and starvation but he is also the *"Father of chemical warfare"* because he was the main proponent of the deployment of poisonous gases on the battlefields in WW1. Check out the song and the videoclip: *Sabaton, Father*
@reklessbravo2129
Жыл бұрын
As soon as he mentioned artificial fertilizer the song popped straight into my head
@Sniperboy5551
Жыл бұрын
That’s metal af, I’ve never gotten into their music, but I’ve definitely heard of them. That sounds like a cool song, thanks for sharing bro!
@ffarkasm
Жыл бұрын
@@Sniperboy5551 i suggest you to discover their music. Not my favourite band either, but they have some nice story telling, and they are incredible on stage.
@TimeSurfer206
Жыл бұрын
I'm a Boomer, and their name alone got me to look. I got hooked from their storytelling.
Ammonia products ARE actually used for foodstuffs. Ammonia salts are commonly used in liqourice known as Salmiak. Also ammonium carbonates are used as baking powder for certain recipes.
@bevinboulder5039
Жыл бұрын
I can confirm this. We have an old family recipe for sugar cookies that uses hartshorn or ammonium carbonate as the leavening agent. They have a distinct tasty flavor when baked and, if you put the cookies in an airtight container before they're iced it smells like ammonia when you open the container.
@SimuLord
Жыл бұрын
Finnish licorice stretches the definition of "food".
@bevinboulder5039
Жыл бұрын
@@SimuLord 🤣
@DutchLabrat
Жыл бұрын
Weird thing. In the low countries and Scandinavia ammonia chloride is CANDY. I can eat it by the handful! Outside this area ..... not so much.
@MsMiDC
Жыл бұрын
@@DutchLabrat Salmiak is wat er in Nederland gegeten word, ammoniumchloride ;)
The man who invented the Haber-Bosch process is also the brain behind the Chemical Warfare of Germany in WW 1.
The major reason why this isnt used today is because its very slow and operating costs are high. Think of it like this: the Haber-Bosch method is driving your car, this method right now is like driving your car on gold and the top speed is 1 mile per hour. Before we can drive down the costs its useless, because costs is often very well correlated with Co2 emissions. So right now the process is like driving a car with a top speed of 1 mile an hour and it spews out so much Co2 cars looks clean.
@ChemEDan
Жыл бұрын
Yeah, initially I misread this though. Haber-Bosch with red hydrogen & process heat is basically my vision of the future, if such a future is ever achieved before we go extinct. Planes would definitely benefit from liquid hydrogen though.
@kolbyking2315
Жыл бұрын
@Dan Humans won't go extinct. Even a global nuclear war wouldn't be enough. Only a 1 in 300 million year asteroid would do the trick.
@themonkeyspaw7359
Жыл бұрын
@@ChemEDan Liquid hydrogen 😂 If even space companies do everything possible to not use liquid hydrogen for rockets, why would airplane companies do the same?
@megamaser
Жыл бұрын
This is a good point, but the phrasing is confusing.
@ChemEDan
Жыл бұрын
@@themonkeyspaw7359 For the same reason space companies supposedly feel like they're forced to - LH2 has the best specific impulse. Planes benefit in many ways that rockets can't. For example, solid oxide fuel cells have the same power density as gas turbines but almost twice the efficiency. Rockets are pretty much stuck with rocket engines as their powerplants. Also LH2 planes could reach higher altitudes than hydrocarbon planes, so they would enjoy lower drag. Rockets spend most of their time above the atmosphere so it's not a valid comparison. Side effects of having cryogenic liquids available - chilled magnet cores (higher magnetic fields before they get saturated) and superconducting wires (no need for heat rejection) make transformers and motors extremely compact. And air can be precooled if you're compressing it. It gets even better with scaling, which has been the trend anyway for some time now. It's not difficult to imagine a plane with several thousand passengers slowly lumbering through the sky. They'd probably have more people than most of the towns they fly over. #flyoverstate
How do make it indeed :)
Plants use protein nitogenase that has a molecule FeMoCo which stands for iron molybdenum cofactor which can reduce nitrogen gas to ammonia. The chemical mechanism is fascinating.
@benjaminmiller3620
Жыл бұрын
And by "plants" you mean Cyanobacteria, surely? Nitrogenase are destroyed by oxygen, which plants both produce, and need to breath, which is why they rely on symbiotic bacteria to fix nitrogen for them. Fun fact: some plants have a hemoglobin analogue (Leghemoglobin) that makes their roots "bleed" red, and is believed to be an oxygen quench to keep the nitrogen fixing bacteria happy and anoxic. (And thus their nitrogenase working properly.)
@MadScientist267
Жыл бұрын
You can't "reduce" nitrogen gas into ammonia lol. Or anything else for that matter.
@victordonchenko4837
Жыл бұрын
@@MadScientist267 Reduction means decreasing the oxidation state in chemistry. From 0 in nitrogen gas to -3 in ammonia.
@jackkrell4238
Жыл бұрын
The nitrogen fixing bacteria themselves are sourced with some oxygen as the symbiotic organisms are aerobic. The leghemonoglobin only faciliates a level oxygen supply so the nitrogenase is protected. Some leguminous plants can utilize the nitrogenase to convert N_2 to ammonia(NH_3), with the ntirogenase enzyme complex facilitated by ATP binding.
@benjaminmiller3620
Жыл бұрын
@@jackkrell4238 "Some leguminous plants can utilize the nitrogenase..." Could I get a citation for that? If it's true I really want to read that paper.
Hmm, actually this sounds like the Red Hydrogen systems Japan is trying to scale up to commercial levels could produce Ammonia with just an few extra steps. Red Hydrogen involves using a gas cooled high temperature reactor to provide super high temperatures to power a process to split off hydrogen from water, so just take that red hydrogen and add an extra layer to use the heat from that same reactor to bond it with nitrogen.
@azmanabdula
Жыл бұрын
Why is it called red hydrogen?
@EternalxFrost
Жыл бұрын
You can do the same with two electrodes submerged in water, plugged to a power source @ 12V DC. The electric current will split water into H2 and O2 (electrolysis). You pump out hydrogen out of the system, into a high temperature reactor from one side, and you pump in N2 from the other side to make NH3 inside the reactor. I just don't get where you're coming from with your '' Red hydrogen ''. That's the first time I ever hear about it. Metallic hydrogen ? Yes. Red hydrogen ? Never.
@leaf742
Жыл бұрын
hydrogen is assigned a color based on how it is produced. It’s a hydrogen economy quirk. No real reason behind some colors. Hydrogen is colorless. White = natural Red/Pink/Purple = nuclear Green/Yellow = renewable Blue = fossil fuel + carbon capture Grey = natural gas (vast majority) Brown/Black = coal
@EternalxFrost
Жыл бұрын
@@leaf742 Never knew about that. We learn something everyday, it seems.
@BrendanKOD
Жыл бұрын
@@azmanabdula There are a lot of different colors assigned to Hydrogen based on how it's made. Red Hydrogen it's made via a thermal process with the heat provided by nuclear power.
If your heat source for the Haber-Bosch was Nuclear, the whole impact could be reduced.
Woohoo! Got it right! Saw the molecule and thought: That's NH3, ammonia. Chemistry A-Levels was useful after all.
If we would alternate our crops with nitrogen fixing cover crops we wouldn't have to rely on fertilizers so much.
@kensmith5694
Жыл бұрын
Yes, if we eat more beans the problem is less. Bean fix nitrogen. Rice and corn need nitrogen. Mix them together with some spices and you have a tasty dinner.
@FrozEnbyWolf150
Жыл бұрын
You can also intercrop, as in plant them at the exact same time. Since the legumes will not compete as much for nitrogen, most other plants will do just fine. This is the same idea behind the Three Sisters method indigenous farmers use.
Ammonia makes an excellent refrigerant and was also the original before CFCs!
@kensmith5694
Жыл бұрын
The poisonous properties of a ammonia argue against using it in that way. That was the reason to look of other gases to use.
@henryrroland
Жыл бұрын
@@kensmith5694 Antifreeze is toxic too, but people continue to use
@GilmerJohn
Жыл бұрын
One advantage is that if there is a leak, you know very quickly!
@GilmerJohn
Жыл бұрын
@@kensmith5694 -- It's still in common use for large plants. It's cheap. Leaks can quickly be detected. Most commercial ice plants still use it.
@allangibson8494
Жыл бұрын
@@kensmith5694 Ammonia is still used in commercial and domestic refrigeration. Caravan gas fridges use ammonia as the refrigerant. Propane is more common in compressor systems now.
Love reading scishow comments, half for learning random facts which is always a plus and half to laugh at people trying to be smart arses😅👌🏼
There is a company called Fuel Positive that is working on a method to create green ammonia and hopefully will come out with it this year.
@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360
Жыл бұрын
It is not a problem to make it. Problem is to make it cheap, or at least comparable by price to other methods.
@protocetid
Жыл бұрын
Ammonia cars would be a way to keep the combustion engine alive, enthusiasts grieve the loss of several ICE characteristics in EVs.
@Dayanto
Жыл бұрын
@@protocetid Ammonia cars are never happening because of safety concerns. This is mainly about energy storage and fertilizers. (and maybe shipping)
Well that’s a title
For anyone who may wonder, all of these things are very easy to figure out in theory. Not complex really at all. The hard part is getting them to the realistic level.
Hank, the compressed gas version of ammonia as a fertilizer doesn’t pollute the ground water. Only granules and liquids pollute.
ENRR might not be scalable. Some things just aren't. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, won't know until we exhaust every possibility.
@marcwebb1415
Жыл бұрын
What further hurdles are restricting ENRR that you can identify? I have a more detailed hypothesis in another comment.
@iwontliveinfear
Жыл бұрын
@@marcwebb1415 I honestly don't know. However I used to be an assistant at a facility that was trying to scale up electrical production from hydrogen fuel cells to power something "larger than a car". They had been working on it for decades before I came on. It wasn't going to work and the project was eventually shelved. In this case the larger the electron exchange membrane, the less efficient it worked. There were diminishing returns that scaled exponentially with the surface area of the membrane to the point where you would actually start losing power production. From a power production standpoint you are better off running multiple fuel cells in parallel than running a large fuel cell. But when you are trying to design a hydrogen fuel cell powered electric aircraft, the weight of multiple cells is a no go. Now what little I do know about ENRR is that it's basically electrolysis with extra steps. It's the exact opposite process to hydrogen fuel cell power generation. More to the point though, I wasn't saying that ENRR can't be scaled up, I'm saying that maybe the problems they are experiencing with trying to scale it up might be because it can't be scaled. Some things just can't be scaled, at least not with our current understanding of physics.
"How do Make It" Was there not enough room in the title, was it a typo, or was it intentional?
What about bacterial nitrogen fixation? Have we found a way to make ammonia that way for cheap and easy?
Hank, you better be telling your kids all your Dad jokes! Especially the science jokes. I hope, because you have a fun delivery, that your kids enjoy all the science you bring to them! We really need a lot of STEM - motivated kids with a liberal dousing of the Arts. And your kids are in that next up and coming generation we'll need to help push forward.
@hjertrudfiddlecock4394
Жыл бұрын
my guess is that they are the reason we only hear the good ones
Ammonia _can_ create solutions. It can be solved in water, which btw. can produce a nice fountain in an Erlenmeyer flask, but it is also used as nonaqueous solvent, for example for sodium.
Another certified neighborhood classic
@thebarkingmouse
Жыл бұрын
If we built LFTRs, we could make carbon neutral ammonia. LFTRs in 5 minutes.
@fintanbochra
Жыл бұрын
@@thebarkingmouse - What about slippage?
what about genetically modified nitrogen fixing soil bacteria to replace nitrogen fertilizer? I'm pretty sure I heard there is a company trialling nitrogen fixing bacteria with the self regulating gene turned off so they continue fixing nitrogen even when the soil concentration is high. After some quick googling, the company is called Pivot Bio. It seems like a much better alternative than just a diffrent process for making amoinia.
@Virtuous_Rogue
Жыл бұрын
It's a scale problem. Bioreactors are a pain to scale and it would be weird to see their genetic modifications last long if they tried to get it into the wild population. It will be very hard to outcompete the easily scaled HB process. My guess is the company goal is to eat into the HB process market like a lot of green energy is eating into oil and gas, rather than a full replacement of the process.
@kensmith5694
Жыл бұрын
@@Virtuous_Rogue Bioreactors may have an advantage if they take in sunlight as the energy source. It would not be small in footprint but it may take a lot less energy input. In a world where the cost of energy is the cost of everything, it may work out to be a good idea.
@Virtuous_Rogue
Жыл бұрын
@@kensmith5694 The main cost issue with bioreactors is you have to supply nutrients to the bacteria (very expensive and probably a custom mix) and have very tight controls on things like pH. It's very hard to keep a big container at uniform conditions when stirring it too hard will kill your bacteria so scaling usually involves adding more units which adds more complexity. If energy prices really skyrocket it could become viable.
Thanx for the gratuitous reference to the excellent band Three Friends
Hey scishow. Have you looked at doing an episode on custom metabolism microbes? It's a newer field In biotech where many many new genes are added to microbes to enhance the efficiency of photosynthesis. And then use the extra available energy to say break down plastics in the environment into the oil they came from or into water and insoluble carbon. The insoluble carbon is left behind in the microbes body and a huge farm of these guys could be used to generate clean drinking water and graphite from plastic trash.
Cat pee. Cat pee is full of ammonia. Just separate the ammonia from the rest of the pee. I discovered that one of my cats had been going in the corner of the laundry room while I was ill, once. I poured some bleach on the puddle and got a lovely poisonous foam, which I let sit for a bit.
@DawnDavidson
Жыл бұрын
Yeah, but how do you get cats to pee *on command*? Sure, they’ll pee everywhere you DON’T want them to, but have you ever seen a cat do anything you DO want them to? I mean, except by accident, which is when they look at you like “I totally meant to do that, you puny human.” 😂
@FrozEnbyWolf150
Жыл бұрын
Not to take the joke too seriously, but as cats are obligate carnivores, the cost of producing that ammonia would be exceptionally high due to the carbon footprint of livestock farming. A good way to make use of it though is to get a biodegradable clumping litter, and then use the clumps as fertilizer. It also helps scare away rodent pests in your garden.
@ooooneeee
Жыл бұрын
Yeah no, collecting human pee would be a lot easier and we produce more than cats too.
0:00 before the video I already knew what they were talking about
every day I am watching KZread and I see an unfamiliar scishow video, and I wonder "when did they post THAT"? ... and then I click and find out "oh, 15 minutes ago."
Interesting, but in order to be seriously done, it has to be cheaper as well. The best option currently on the horizon is to stick with HB process and get the high temperatures from nuclear power. Current reactors run about 300C and are at high pressure. Newer Gen IV reactors are designed to run at ~700C and low pressure which is more than enough to come up with the heat, pressure (and electric power) needed to make NH3. Using direct heat from reactors is more efficient as it saves a conversion step, and the reactors can be made small, such as the SMRs discussed today. See "MSR" (Molten Salt Reactor) for more info. Thorium can also be used for even greater fuel efficiency.
Anybody old enough to remember diaper pails knows that urine can very quickly turn to ammonia. About a millennium ago and sooner people used to pee into barrels that were used to make ammonia for cleaning houses and other purposes. Why can’t we deal with a way to collect urine to create ammonia? Would reduce waste in water and be meeting a need.
With the population at 8 billion, the strain on resources, the depletion of wildlife and natural spaces, is unsustainable. I didn't eat cake, I cried.
Based on the video title I actually was expecting you to say "ammonia", Hank.
@GabrieleR95
Жыл бұрын
The thumbnail as well, it's a pretty recognisable molecule.
@MadScientist267
Жыл бұрын
@@GabrieleR95 Could just as easily be methane 🤣
@GabrieleR95
Жыл бұрын
@@MadScientist267 Nitrogen is usually blue in these models, and carbon is usually black. Also methane has 4 hydrogen atoms...
@MadScientist267
Жыл бұрын
@@GabrieleR95 Lol yeah realized my "4 vs 3" mistake after I posted... Not entirely sure there's hard rules on the colors tho haha but whatever yeah my bad
Is the fork in the opener with the cake slice, a specific kind of fork for a specific purpose? Looks very strange with its asymmetric relief on the tines!
@DawnDavidson
Жыл бұрын
Pretty sure it’s just a modern salad/dessert fork. They often have that little swoop on one edge to help with cutting some things. But you are right, that the pattern of the cut outs to create the tines is very unusual and asymmetric!
5:00 i think you mean "energy vector" rather than "energy source", we still need to produce the energy for the reaction to create it, but yeah, it's easier to store and transport than hydrogen, and could be useful to convert extra wind/solar power during production peaks for this kind of usage.
That was brilliant
Shout out to all my Bangaloreans here! That chaos from 2.10 - 2.15 is our beloved K.R. market. 😂
Thanks 👍
Thank you
I too, have wondered… How do make it? Edit: In regards to water based electrolyte inefficiencies at large scale ENRR procedure, could such issues also be addressed by amplifying the flow of current introduced to the water-nitrogen mixture? i.e. Would advances in thorium fueled nuclear reactors, and other endeavors in advanced electrical generation, produce output that would be sufficient for such processes using available technologies applied in the described apparatus?
@commodus7820
Жыл бұрын
Yes
@MadScientist267
Жыл бұрын
You're a solution looking for a problem lol
@wasd____
Жыл бұрын
@@MadScientist267 I don't know, I think climate change and the prospect of mass starvation if we find ourselves without good ways of generating ammonia are pretty big problems.
@MadScientist267
Жыл бұрын
@@wasd____ Oh yes because THAT'S what's gonna do it... 🤣🙄
I'm surprised you didn't mention one of the key reasons this pairs better with green tech than Haber: Intermittency. The high pressures and temperatures associated with traditional ammonia production mean that it is expensive to start and stop. If you switched all hydrocarbons out for green electricity you would need a large energy storage facility to keep power consistent. Low temperature low pressure processes can start and stop near instantly, meaning you could run it powered by solar during the day and not at night, removing the need for energy storage. It could actually talk to the grid and help to manage power levels, replacing other power infrastructure.
If this works for ammonia, maybe it'd also work for just plain old H2 gas, too. Right now all of the ways we produce molecular hydrogen are pretty nasty, pollution-wise. Run this method off of solar-power or wind-power and you'd have a totally green way of generating both ammonia and hydrogen gas (just leave out the part where you combine it with nitrogen and you've got hydrogen gas).
Power all of it by renewable resources and source the H2 directly from hydrolysis and the Haber-Bosch process becomes attractive again. To account for the gap in intermittent renewable energy, you use a combined cycle NH3-H2 dual fuel turbine (optimizing the mix yields greater energy output as well as minimizes NOx emissions). If the N2 air separation, hydrolysis (& H2 compression/storage), and Haber-Bosch processes are all done relatively close by to each other, then only pipelines need be used rather than waste more unnecessary energy on transport. +Bonus points if you repurpose a LNG pipeline to carry the ammonia to the final point of use. ++Double bonus if you ship it across the globe on a vessel retrofitted to run on NH3-H2 dual fuel where the H2 is obtained by ammonia cracking using the waste heat of the engine.
@yancgc5098
Ай бұрын
Nuclear energy can also be used to power all of it and you wouldn’t have the intermittency problem of solar and wind energy
"How do Make It", someone didn't proof read the title.
Couldn't they harvest ammonia from human waste using an enzyme? Oops, the answer is sort of, but it's still ineffective. "Direct stripping of ammonia (NH3) from urine with no chemical addition achieved only 12% total nitrogen recovery at hydraulic retention times comparable with the EC systems. Our results demonstrate that ammonia can be extracted via electrochemical means at reasonable energy inputs of approximately 12 kWh kg(-1) N"
5:00 small mistake: "Ammonia could become an alternative source of energy". If it requires energy in the first place to make it, it's not called an energy source, but an energetic vector. It helps store and/ or transport energy. It's like electricity: it can transport energy but electricity it not an energy SOURCE because you can't harvest it or extract it from the ground. It's like hydrogen as well because (at least for most of it) doesn't come out of a well and energy used to make it is bigger than energy collected once "using" it.
But if we're turning water into ammonia, won't that reduce our water supplies over time, assuming we're using fresh water only? Unless they plan to use non-potable or sea water?
@AnAcceptedName
Жыл бұрын
No, because the ammonia is used in plants and then gets released into the atmosphere when it decomposes, or our waste when we eat it. These nitrates or nitrous oxides then break down over time to form atmospheric nitrogen and water again.
@ThatReplyGuy
Жыл бұрын
@@AnAcceptedName Cool, good to know.
@erininnes7448
Жыл бұрын
@@AnAcceptedName Okay but what we are talking about is accessible, potable water - not just water vapour in the atmosphere. So you're making a false equivalence here. The concern about potable water supplies being depleted for ammonia production is still a valid one.
@AnAcceptedName
Жыл бұрын
@@erininnes7448 Not really, with the current process of hydrogen production, called steam methane (or sometimes naptha) reforming, it still uses a significantly large quantity of water. The reaction is CH4 + H2O→CO + 3H2. Then the gas shift reaction to concert CO to CO2 with the addition of more water which does create more hydrogen. So using water directly, is only ~half as efficient, but it doesn't create carbon emissions, and hopefully requires significantly less power and energy (steam reforming is wildly endothermic), if it truly can be done at low temperatures and pressures.
@MadScientist267
Жыл бұрын
Where do you people come from
Interesting, thank you for sharing this with us 🙋🏻♂️
Ammonia could actually be one of the solutions to long term storage and transport when it comes to renewable energy sources. You've mentioned in other videos that a challenge for renewables like solar and wind is how to store the energy until it's needed, which is a problem that fossil fuels do not have since the chemical energy is already stored up in the fuel itself. If we used the excess energy from green sources to produce ammonia, that ammonia could be transported more safely and efficiency than sending electricity over wires long distance, or fossil fuels through pipelines and railways. Ammonia is the chemical battery we've had all along.
Good ole ammonia!
This is real, not just research. You can buy a unit, it shows up in a seacan and they drop it on your farm, it makes 4 tonnes a day, you plug in green energy and water and attach a tank for the ammonia. There are several companies making ammonia from green electricity (electrolysis), air and water. Generally, they say making liquid ammonia is about 70% energy efficient to make ammonia liquid. To put that in perspective, making hydrogen is usually about 75% efficient but then cooling hydrogen to liquid uses another 30% of the energy. This means ammonia has a huge efficiency advantage for green fuel applications. Oh, another cool thing about this ammonia tech is it can handle variable power inputs. If it is a super cloudy day and the power going into the system is lower the production is lower BUT you still have production. Allowing green energy to be decoupled from a grid really changes the financial considerations.
Couldn’t the ENRR process work more efficiently by using a series of plates in the electrolyte and then pumping nitrogen gas in from below (like an aerator tank)?
It like removing rust from my tools
HANK what is the catalyst??That seems to be the most important part of this.
Hang on. N2 needs x amount of energy to be broken apart. Why would one method be so much better at it than the other? They ought to be using roughly the same amount to break down the Nitrogen. Is the Haber-Bosch method really THAT inefficient?
@AnAcceptedName
Жыл бұрын
It's more about the issue of hydrogen creation than necessarily about the combination with nitrogen. The issues presented in this story is because each side of the membrane need to be in liquid solution in order for the ions to pass. It does however cut down on the need for the haber Bosch process's need to be at high pressure, which is energy intensive.
@SlimThrull
Жыл бұрын
@@AnAcceptedName Ahh, I see. Thank you.
Wow I don’t know how do make. Now I know how do make
8 Billions. We have about 2 or 3 billion more in us until we naturally start to level out Unless technology changes for the better...or climate change changes for the worse...
@skrimper
Жыл бұрын
The chaos is gonna be lit
@justayoutuber1906
Жыл бұрын
Sustainable Earth was at 2-3 Billion
We are producing green ammonia in Morris MN using wind energy to run the electrolyzer, nitrogen scrubber and haber Bosch process. Can be produced with direct pay at cost with hydrogen production credits from the fed. There is research being done to retrofit natural gas turbines to burn the ammonia. This is a big deal because it would allow us to still burn a fuel to produce electricity in other parts of the country but the fuel could be produced using renewable energy in a location hundreds or thousands of miles away from where it is being burned.
So ENRR produces oxygen? Which could be used to used in the other process.
The new High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors (HTGR) produce high temperature Hydrogen as a by-product. Wouldn't that be a more efficient way to make Ammonia?
@AnAcceptedName
Жыл бұрын
Yes! I've been talking a lot about the new generation reactors and all the extra benefits of them. This is one of them. Although the issue again is scale. Modern NH3 production facilities are using millions of standard cubic feet of hydrogen per day to produce the amount of ammonia needed for our farming requirements.
@kensmith5694
Жыл бұрын
A nice thing about hydrogen is that it is not super happy to make isotopes when hit with neutrons etc. This means that the hydrogen is fairly easy to keep clean for radioactive stuff. On the other hand, I think salt cooled reactors are better reactors.
How do make it indeed...
Tackling the overpopulation crisis will go a long way to solving our climate crisis. Couple that with tackling per capita energy and resource use.
🎶"Haber-Bosch the Great Alliance, where's the contradiction? Fed the world by ways of science, sinner or a saint?"🎶
I love the smell of ammonia.
I feel like using electricity to make chemically stored fuel that can be burned again is way less efficient than just using the initial electricity for electric engines in the first place?
@lordgarion514
Жыл бұрын
And how are you going to get that electricity to something that's going 70MPH down the highway??? You think a wire running along the road, like they do for electric trains in Europe, or a chemical battery inside the car, would be better???
@waterunderthebridge7950
Жыл бұрын
@@lordgarion514 I don’t know if you’ve been living under a rock for the last century or something. You do know that electric cars are an actual thing? You know, the ones which basically run on a heavy-duty rechargeable battery? With the conversional waste of energy you could probably power several more cars, not to mention all that waste heat contributing to atmospheric warming
@lordgarion514
Жыл бұрын
@@waterunderthebridge7950 You do realize that's you are the one who said charging batteries was stupid..... So, how to power an electric car going down road, without batteries???
@lordgarion514
Жыл бұрын
@@waterunderthebridge7950 Maybe you should have a 12 year old read your first post, and tell you what you meant. Lol
@lordgarion514
Жыл бұрын
@@waterunderthebridge7950 Oh, and charging and discharging a battery are both around 99% efficient. Burning gasoline is about 20-30 percent efficient. Which is why a Tesla needs less than $2 to drive 100 miles. But a gasoline car of the same weight (about 5,000 pounds) needs about 5 gallons of gas to go 100 miles.....
Why do channels change the title of a video a few hours after it's released?
@linguinelabs
Жыл бұрын
Testing for what title gives the most clickthrough rate
@1mattcq
Жыл бұрын
@@linguinelabs bit disingenuous tho. Just stick to your title. Show what videos they don't have faith in
@paulkepshire5056
Жыл бұрын
Did anyone notice the typo in the changed title?
@1mattcq
Жыл бұрын
@@paulkepshire5056 I do now. Thanks
@1mattcq
Жыл бұрын
@@paulkepshire5056 Haha they changed it again. So 3 different titles in a day.
Yes, please tell. How do make it?
Everyone in the comments is trying to explain the science, my simple mind is just looking at the grammer in the title. Lol
not sure if ammonia would be the best choice of biofuel... considering the inherent boom boom potential
When I saw the thumbnail for this video, I thought, "They're going to talk about chlorine trifluoride? How in the heck does THAT molecule save lives? I mean, it ignites just about ANYTHING. Even test engineers . . . ." Then I watched the video and asked myself, "Hmmmm . . . which is worse: ammonia, or ammonium nitrate? Maybe we should ask the people of Texas City, Texas. Or, more recently, West, Texas."
How do make, SciShow?
Indeed, " how do make it without killing ourselves?" 🤔🤔
Regarding the first piece of info Nitrogen production. You NH3 comes from combining N from air and all around us. While H3 comes from CH3+O2=> CO2+H3 and t⁰ which can be used to produce electricity to power all this contrqceptuon(H3mixN). Only thing remaining here te fix is the CO2 which would be cheaper to capture locally using any existing technology scaled for industrial and household complexes.. I'm a dreamer..
@tolic14ever
Жыл бұрын
Actually the idea I was proposing is that we are running from carbon producing projects though we have them already ready and at scale... all we need is to scale down the technology of carbon capture..
So does Haber-Bosch have to use methane as its hydrogen source? We can't just electrolyse water and pipe in the hydrogen gas?
Actually, there’s the lithium process through which you use lithium as a catalyst to split the nitrogen and form lithium nitride that then reacts with water to steal hydrogens and form ammonia and lithium hydroxide which then gets recycled into lithium metal again and the cycle continues.
@thebarkingmouse
Жыл бұрын
If we built LFTRs, we could make carbon neutral ammonia. LFTRs in 5 minutes.
@Dayanto
Жыл бұрын
Definitely interesting in the long term, but will likely require 20 years to scale up. Electrolysis + Haber-Bosch (without steam methane reforming) is fine. These types of marginal efficiency gains shouldn't be the main priority right now. With new solar in some places for as little as 1.5¢/kwh, we need to go full tilt capturing these stranded resources and shipping them to other places where electricity is more expensive. Then _later_ we can worry about efficiency to make it viable to produce in more places.
There is a large and vast free source of ammonia in the form of our liquid wastes which could be harvested as we have done in the past burnstead are purposefully consumed in giant digesters and released
How do indeed
Isn't Methane 50x (or was it 5x?) more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2? Either way, sounds like a good thing to me to split it up and let it turn into CO2.
And it kept us cool as an early refrigerant. 🤷♂️😎👍🏻
Haber Bosch process doesn’t require natural gas as the feed. Straight hydrogen and nitrogen works too. You do however need an external source of energy to drive the compressors and heat the process. Natural gas is useful for scrubbing the oxygen out of the feed air… Uranium is a more efficient catalyst than the iron used in most of the modern ammonia plants…
@ooooneeee
Жыл бұрын
Hydrogen doesn't occur in nature much so it has to be made from hydrocarbons.
@allangibson8494
Жыл бұрын
@@ooooneeee Hydrogen occurs quite commonly in nature. Just not on earth where you have organisms generating that universally rare free oxygen… Converting water to hydrogen is easy but does involve energy consumption. Plants do it all the time. That’s step one in photosynthesis - generating free protons. Oxygen is a waste product from this. The hydrogen is then used to reduce carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons. Electrochemistry is far more efficient however - particularly if you crank up the temperature.
There's a typo in your title. "How do Make It Without Killing Ourselves?"
question : You say that getting the hydroge from methan leaves the carbon free to creatz CO2 ... isn't the process more like ripping a couple H atomes from the methans, so that the CO2 remains behind? Isn't methane a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2? Aren't theire ways to isolate the carbon so all the hydrogen can go into ammonia, and the carbon can be retrieved for other uses?
How do make it indeed
Mentioning ammonia fertilizers and climate change without mentioning the detrimental effects that soluble nitrogen fertilizers have on soil organic matter and carbon sequestration seems like a pretty massive oversight.
Ammonia is used to make baking Powder which is used in cakes
1. Isn't this basically just electrolysis with nitrogen added? 2. Do any biochemists know why we have to use ammonia and not just straight nitrogen? Is it just easier to transport as ammonia? Because I thought the nitrogen was the whole point of the use of ammonia in farming and not the hydrogen.
in what compound is ammonia explosive?
@jimmitchell6000
Жыл бұрын
ammonium nitrate ?
@YCCCm7
Жыл бұрын
Yes hello this is not the CIA would you care to explain what you need this for
@kingjames4886
Жыл бұрын
@@jimmitchell6000 pretty sure that has more to do with the nitrate than the ammonia, kinda like potassium nitrate, sodium nitrate etc...
@jimmitchell6000
Жыл бұрын
@@kingjames4886 Its the nitrogen in general.
McDonalds know a lot about ammonia laced patties
The title has quite an typo, my guess would be do is supposed to be To.
we should also eat more beans, they don’t need as much nitrogen fertilizer because they make it themselves (well symbiotic bacteria). someone should try to popularize bean cake, i hear people prefer low gluten (amount/cross linking) in cake flour as is
The falafel mouse was around a few ghosts.
How much methane is being taken out of the atmosphere by the current process? Isn't methane, although shorter lived, more effective at trapping greenhouse gasses than CO2? If we switched over, would we see a short term spike in the greenhouse effect as methane levels rose?
Cool
God how inefficient does a process have to be for electrolysis to be the alternative?
But we are facing massive water shortages. Can sea water be uses?
Maybe someday, we can extract Ammonia from the clouds of planet Jupiter.
Still not sure why businesses aren't just "farming" ammonia at waste management facilities. Pee is an abundant ressource, seems like using it as a raw source of ammonia would make sense.
@AlRoderick
Жыл бұрын
You'd have to distill it out of wastewater which would use more energy.