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Comment by kurthr

2 days ago

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.

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kurthr

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blueflow  2 days ago

You didn't read the article? "The process requires no external power" right after the headline.

  • hansvm  2 days ago

    Like you said, the energy comes from somewhere. If I had to guess, it's effectively solar powered (the catalyst lowering the activation energy enough that photons can actually do the work), plus indirectly solar powered in that you need wind to physically move the compounds around.

    • adrian_b  2 days ago

      I have read the research paper and the energy appears to come mostly from the pump, because the flow of gas and vapor in the device causes contact electrification, which helps the redox reaction.

      They have not given any numbers about the energy consumed by the pump, but at least in this experimental devices it is likely that the amount of ammonia that is produced is very small for the energy consumed by the pump, in comparison with other synthesis methods.

      For now, the ammonia is produced as a solution in water with very low ammonia concentration. Perhaps this could be usable directly as a fertilizer for plants. For any other uses, concentrating the ammonia produced in this way would require a large amount of additional energy.

      In the form presented now, this method of ammonia synthesis would be too inefficient, but the authors hope that the efficiency can be improved some orders of magnitude.