Comment by hunterpayne
3 days ago
Sort of, but there are important details you miss. First the nitrogen triple bond is one of the strongest in nature so it takes a lot of energy to break it. So we don't actually do that in the way you think in a real ammonia plant. Instead we heat (usually) Magnesium and that extracts Nitrogen from the air (actually a pure nitrogen atmosphere). That's not what is happening in this plant. And the difference in the effectiveness of those two different methods is probably pretty big. This seems more like a PR stunt to get investment.
The reaction N2 + 3 H2 => 2 NH3 is thermodynamically spontaneously but kinetically forbidden by the strength of the N-N bond. That's why the key breakthrough of the Haber-Bosch process is the use of a doped iron oxide (magnetite -- is that what you meant?) catalyst that allows the reaction to proceed at an industrially useful rate. This wind powered ammonia plant gets the hydrogen from water electrolysis instead of steam-reformed methane; the plant is otherwise using a conventional Haber-Bosch process.
Using electrolytic hydrogen to make ammonia was fairly common in the first half of the 20th century, because a lot of remote hydroelectric plants didn't immediately have uses for all of the electricity they could generate. They turned low cost electricity into pure hydrogen and used it to make ammonia and derivatives, which were easier-to-transport high value products.