The End of Haber Bosch
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ย. 2024
- Correction: 7:20 The electrons in this equation should have a "-" indicating negative charge.
Billions of people rely on a single, hundred-year-old chemical reaction every day: nitrogen gas + hydrogen gas → ammonia. This simple, short reaction is a hidden monster: it consumes 1% of the world’s TOTAL energy supply and releases 2% of the world’s TOTAL carbon dioxide emissions. Join George on a quest to discover whether the Haber-Bosch reaction’s time is finally up.
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Host:
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In the video we said we’d come back to this later, but then we cut it, so here it is as a comment: the next step in killing Haber-Bosch is figuring out how to get protons and electrons from water without causing all hell to break loose in the reaction vessel - and the same team that published the work described in this video thinks they can make it happen at the anode of this same device: www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05108-y
This new process will not take off at all and I'll tell you why. any chemists worth their salt knows how to turn ammonia into explosives. How anybody with the most basic rudimentary knowledge on how to do a Google search and how to find TH-cam videos made by other chemists demonstrating chemical techniques can make explosives from ammonia. The only thing that keeps people from doing it is the fact that most of our transactions are done via credit or electronically that can be monitored. Now you're giving a new technology that basically anybody could make ammonia at home? It won't be long before somebody with a chip on their shoulder and nothing to lose decides to go ahead and make an explosive device. No my friends As a chemist and an ACS member there's no way this technology will take off. You are just going to have to come to grips with the fact the man who saved almost a billion lives Yes also created chemical warfare... deal with it!
A very good use of electrochemistry.
I have been thinking that even if a large scale version could be built. the ammonia would still need to be converted to ammonium nitrate
Actually, anhydrous ammonia is commonly used- injected directly into the soil 10 to 20 cm deep...
hahah so we are all going to starve but we will have electric cars lol
I remember in my first chemistry class the prof told us that if any of us find a process that can replace haber bosch, we should contact him for a research partnership cause that's an instant nobel price
Mine asked us to pledge that we would give him 0.01% of the profits we made from the discovery. It would mean nothing to us, that small percentage, but it would still make him very rich.
@@williamm8069 Nah it's like the iron price but with more kaboom
There was a norvegian-patented process where instead of ammonia the product was nitrous oxide, and it was made with PLASMA!!!!! Sadly it was deemed inefficient (as in, it required a lot of electricity, which in that time was still relatively hard to produce in such quantities) and so the only one facility which produced PLASMA-MADE NITROUS OXIDE was built next to a huge hydroelectric powerplant and then it was shut down somewhere in late 1930-s. Still, i think it's very cool process. Aside from nitrogen-fixating bacteria in soil, this is how most of the natural (i.e. not man-made) nitrogen compounds are made in the wild.
@@quint3ssent1ayes the birkeland-eyde process, inefficient but so elegant imo, just take in air and electricity
My old Industrial chemistry professor used to say: The Haber-Bosh process, bah! It killed more people than it made ammonia. That was referred to the original version (with the iron catalyst) that ran at about 1000 atm and had a tendency to go KA-BOOM lol
Now we only need tons of Trihexyltetradecylphosphonium and Bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide, which are propably both a breeze to make
Or the alternative using lithium alkoxide and GOLD
@@CatboyChemicalSocietybut you know who else is exited about this and has lots of gold? Arms manufacturers.
@@JinKeeyea actually the gold isn't an issue since it can be baked on titanium with chloroauric acid at 600C and it wasn't pure gold but a mix of gold and something else.
@@CatboyChemicalSocietyright! Of course the biggest use of platinum is as a catalyst so it’s a less expensive alternative
I was under the impression those are used to facilitate the reaction and are not “consumed” in the process, as proton shuttles and electrolytes are generally not consumed.
Did I not pay attention?
I get disliking a useful chemical process because it polutes the air, or there are better ways to do the same thing.
But disliking it because the guy who figured it out was evil is just...odd to me.
It's not the prosess' fault.
Did you miss the part where its using 1% of global energy usage and producing 2% of the CO2?
But Fritz Haber didn't want to fix nitrogen for fertilizer, but for explosives used in war
it can be disliked for both reasons at the same time
@@badvillager9487 That's not the process' fault.
@@alexrogers777 You can. Its still odd to me.
3:34 Actually... This temperature is required because of kinetics. The reaction goes in favor of NH₃ when the temperature is low, but the time to produce increases... So it has a temperature optimal spot, where the thermodynamics is diminished, but the kinetics compensate for it
Also the catalyst needs a high temperature to function
the right improved catalyst can change the balance, though, and is being searched for. CSIRO have a useful one that's in the process of being commercialised.
It is also because NH3 is endothermic from its elements; this explains also the "bad" efficiency; because making NH3 cost more energy than to destroy it; so making NH3 "stores" energy into the molecule.
PHZ
(PHILOU Zrealone from the Science Madness forum)
@@philouzlouis2042
Acctully is exothermic, if it was endothermic an increase in temperature would drive the reaction in favor to the products. (Because the temperature change the equilibrium constant)
@@henryrroland
My bad, sorry,
I really thought that it was endothermic because I believed that allowing H2 and N2 to react with each other at STP didn't produce NH3 (at least by smel undetectable vs the N2 and H2 gases; so it is only a matter of incresing the heat and the pressure and voilà NH3 is available; much easier than I thought.
Thank you
I'm with Leila. How amazing that in about 5 minutes you are able to acknowledge that 1% of the global use of fossil fuel produces 50% of our worlds food production and then ignore the significance. Pretty high yield. I would vastly rather feed people than cars with fossil fuel. Of all of the uses of fossil fuel that people wish to abandon I would not be in a hurry to walk away from this one first, You and I would not be here and breathing at the same time if not for this process. Haber and Bosch, put these guys on a pedestal. Totally as an aside, as an undergraduate in chemistry some 50 years ago, I was directed to study German as the language of science. Yeah, the first posting in my career, Mexico.
I too did 4 years of German in high school, same reason. It was pretty cool reading procedures in Bielstein and other journals in the stacks, but by the 70s it was changing fast. Who woulda thought the web would do away with local copies of technical papers and no one would need to learn a language just to translate a paper?
Now large language models and other machine learning techs will actually predict molecular modeling profiles, and we'll be screening thousands of new medicinal compounds, among many other new materials.... can't imagine what it'll be like in 2050!
The story of Fritz Haber is one of the most tragic, yet gut wrenching in history. Veritasium has a great video on him and this process that I highly recommend watching.
It actually gives a great context to the thinking of the era, not simply blaming the guy. Plus making effective weapons is not necessarily an immoral endavour. If you invent very deadly weapon it might actually discourage future conflicts because they will be very costly for the participants. For example if Ukraine had nuclear weapons it almost for sure would not have been attacked conventionally by Russia, the same way Nato is not invading Russia to stop them commiting terrible war crimes, even though right now it would be quite a quick conventional war given what is remaining of russian military.
I see your Fritz Haber and raise you Thomas Midgely.
@@ukaszlampart5316 I could not have said that better myself.
@@TheeGrumpy you win if we're comparing those who died or were harmed by them in some way, shape or form. But if we're comparing the tragedy of their lives and how they helped people, I see your Thomas Midgley and raise you one Alan Turing.
@@BackYardScience2000i see your Alan Turing and raise you the Fluorine Martyrs
Honestly 2% of the world's CO2 emission for 50% of the world's food production, does not seem like a problem to me. We do not need to fly, it is just convenient, we need food.
But if we can knock off the 2% without any compromise, its huge win.
It's not only that. The used hydrocarbons should be let in the earth. No need to pump it up.
But since we need to get to net zero carbon within two or three decades, all of that CO2 would have to be compensated, driving up the price of 50% of the world's food. Which is probably a big deal.
@@unvergebeneid Yes at some point we need to do something. But creating fertilizer making machines to all farms will also emit CO2. And we can probably reduce the amount of fertilizer we need bay farming smarter, and that do not cost any CO2. I feel like we would get the best result by focusing our efforts on the lowest hanging fruits. People need to eat, and have a roof over there head at night thus I am more willing to allow this to "Cost" some CO2 emissions, than I am with fx transportation. And food will get more and more expensive as we get more and more climate problems.
@@Petch85I think we can probably get the best results from trying multiple strategies to reduce carbon emissions at the same time, which is in fact something we can do as a society. Those scientists researching alternatives to Haber-Bosch do not in any way reduce your ability to advocate for more sustainable farming or get people to fly less
in Germany, we pronounce it "HAH-ber", not "HAY-ber".
It’s the man’s name after all. Pronunciation isn’t optional. Such mispronunciation is a sign of either ignorance or hubris.
How we pronounce it in Scotland, too!
In English we also pronounce it "HAH-ber",
I think this is american
@@PaulG.xsame in the Netherlands..
@@PaulG.x American here,I learned it as "HAH-ber." Though I could see someone who only ever read the name pronouncing it as Hay-ber,akin to paper.
At 13:07 you guys say it has almost 100% efficiency. Big disclaimer! There is a massive difference between efficiency and Faradaic efficiency. Even a reaction with 100% Faradaic efficiency will not be 100% efficient
For use with renewable energy the efficiency is not the most important, because the energy is free on surplus days or even negative. The capital costs must be low, because you only run it 30% of the time.
@@lkruijsw that's not true. Solar energy may currently be the cheapest, but it's not free. One of the key factors in the feasibility of any technology is the energy cost required to run it. If energy was free and unlimited then we wouldn't even NEED this technology. We would just spend obscene amounts of energy splitting nitrogen in less efficient ways. There would be nothing wrong with Haber-Bosch if we had free and unlimited renewable energy. We would just use that energy to hydrolyze water for hydrogen and heat the reactions.
Awful lot of pearl clutching and virtue signaling here. A bit much.
Haber process ammonia is also used in ***EXPLOSIVES*** **gasp** (clutches pearls TIGHTER).
You would be absolutely "shook" if you found out about Alfred Nobel..... **faints**.
Chemistry is ***SO*** controversial... /s
***sigh***
You got your engagement now just try talking about the science next time without the histrionics.
When I started as a chemist, reading German was mandatory. I was an analytical chemist in an agricultural lab, so nitrogen chemistry was a big deal in my earliest days as a lab rat. A lot of the procedures we had to follow were only written in German. Well, that was 40 years ago. Maybe things are different now. Fortunately, technical German is not difficult for English speaking chemists.
Well, English _is_ a Germanic language, so it makes sense.
Well, 3 of the biggest chemical companies are located in Germany, so not the worst ideas to learn German.
The reason the Germans were able to get so far ahead was because during the industrial revolution, after the publishing houses in England threw a hissy-fit after their mandated premiums expired and enacted copyright, the Germans never followed suit, and would simply copy and add to English technical books, greatly increasing the speed of Germany's industrialization.
@@Shaker626 It all started with the printing press, when you were able to fast print information.
when i was at university, a BS in chemistry required 2 years of German, because "so much of the research data is written in German" - that was in the early 80s: I've just retired, having spent all those years as a professional chemist, and I've never ONCE had to read a tech journal or research paper in German - keep that in mind, kids, cuz the Dean is just after your money.
One has to be skeptical of a new process which purports to be such an enormous improvement over Haber-Bosch. I admit to being beyond my depth and hope every bit of it is true. We need all the help we can get.
The video does not address the electrical energy required in the new process.
@@romanpolanski4928 Yes it does. It mentions a faradeic efficiency of 98%, which is EXCELLENT!
@@st-ex8506 No, that is the proportion of energy which is converted, not the total amount required.
@@romanpolanski4928 I suppose that you are no chemist, otherwise, you would know how to easily calculate the total amount of electric energy required. That is obviously no criticism. But all the information needed is contained in the video... even if he indeed did not calculate it and presented the result.
Let me explain:
Have you noticed that the chemical formulas presented on the board at 7:10 were showing 6 electrons exchanged per 2 molecules of ammonia?
From that information + the faradeic efficiency, it is easy to calculate the electric energy needed per mole of ammonia!... or per kg, or pound, or ton for that matter!
This process is incredibly energy efficient, especially compared to Haber-Bosh, which is an energy hog of a process.
@@st-ex8506 The electrical energy also depends on the electrode potential a well as the number of electrons. Delta G = nFE, where delta G = free energy change, n = number of electrons exchanged, F = Faraday Constant, E - electrode potential. The Nernst Equation.
Thanks for revealing your ignorance.
As always, the scripts and editing in these videos is freekin' sublime! The whole scene with him just rattling off the crazy chemical name without fail ending with a "Nice" joke is just... chef's kiss great!
I thought it was quite BANAL and DERIVATIVE. You must be new on the internet
@@hamyncheeseOh hello there Prof. Gablogian!
Imagine if a pencil was invented ages ago and we were still using substantially the same process today?
Imagine if a fire was invented eons ago, and people are still using it for cooking food while camping.
Something being from a long time ago doesn't mean it is bad and needs to be replaced.
The "NICE" at 69% killed me :D
Your opinion on what is a " role model " is irrelevant to chemistry. A lot of chemists have worked on projects that could be turned into a weapon and worked on weapons in defense of their country. To be fair, chemical weapons chemistry and research have definitely saved more lives than it took. In just pesticides alone prevented billions from starvation. Even if we dont use most of the early chemicals, they and their science led to others.
(1) To denigrate the Haber-Bosch process because it is "old" is as logical as to denigrate the invention of the wheel. (2) Where does one get the energy to liberate H+ from water? Coal? Natural gas?
I don't know why I am here but has anyone mentioned that there are 20,000 species of legumes that symbiotically fix nitrogen with bacteria and fungi.
From the little I know, farmers have traditionally been alternating crops like wheat with grazing legumes like alfalfa and clover for generations.
I know that modern agriculture depends heavily on massive monocrops. Which is a food security nightmare in itself considering the risk of disease, pests and weather crisis.
It would require a massive change in paradigm , but commercial agriculture could attempt simultaneous mixed crops aka companion planting.
GPS and AI controlled machinery could make this practical.
In countries like the UK, farmers are actually paid to leave fields to nature instead of growing crops. This must mean that environmental needs are as important as food production needs, if so the less intensive polycultures that self generate nitrogen might be plausible even if their output is smaller.
Legumes only add a net of nitrogen to the soil if you kill them before they have a chance to set seeds. They're great, but they require letting a field sit fallow for a season, effectively halving food production.
Crop rotation using legumes was only introduced to Europe about 400 years ago though it was common place in the Americas since seemingly the dawn of agriculture there, though they didn't rotate crops but grew them together as the “three sisters”. So really in Europe this isn't actually a particularly old technique, it's younger than the adoption of iron plows and the invention of the printing press.
The main problem with modern farming is that the incentives are kinda screwed and encourage environmentally destructive practices because the goal is just to produce the largest possible volume without regard for the environment. This means that low yield fields are taken into use and over fertilized and the runoff destroys marine environments. Better incentives for organic farming and taxes on emissions and runoff would help address this issue.
3:46 and it is easily responsible for 50 % of the entire global food production .. quite a good trade if you ask me ..
as a chemical engineer, watching this video is painful
please explain!
As a non-chemical engineer, watching this video was quite enjoyable, as well as usefully informative.
Also, did your mommy not instruct you thusly? "If you've nothing nice to say, then say nothing at all."
@@thomasgarbe8354 I think he’s saying that because chemical engineers usually have a deep respect for Haber Bosch
This is the first vid from this presenter I have seen. It is great and I see another epic chemistry marathon coming right up.
Plants use nitrogenase for nitrogen fixation. Part of nitrogenase is FeMoCo which is an iron molybdenum cofactor that uses nitrogen in the air as a ligand.
Nitrogenase is horribly sensitive to O2 and CO. That's why the bacteria in nitrogen fixing plants are stuck in specialized anoxic nodules, which are both very difficult to genetically engineer into other crops and arent able to keep up with the intense energy demands of nitrogen fixation as they only have access to anaerobic respiration. Finding an O2 tolerant nitrogenase is the holy grail on par with C4 rice, and I'm still bitter that Streptomyces thermoautotrophicus didn't end up working out.
My first thought was “well how do nitrogen fixing plants do it”. I guess someone must have looked at that for inspiration.
@@johningham1880unfortunately, the enzymes involved aren't easy to mass produce, and for the most part only legumes are able to fix nitrogen. They allow the symbiotic hosting of a nitrogen fixing bacteria that no other plant group can support/harbor
Yup! I have no idea what the feasibly of local, natural production would be. Probably not sufficient..
From Encyclopedia Britannica:
Nitrogen fixation in nature
Nitrogen is fixed, or combined, in nature as nitric oxide by lightning and ultraviolet rays, but more significant amounts of nitrogen are fixed as ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates by soil microorganisms. More than 90 percent of all nitrogen fixation is effected by them. Two kinds of nitrogen-fixing microorganisms are recognized: free-living (nonsymbiotic) bacteria, including the cyanobacteria (or blue-green algae) Anabaena and Nostoc and genera such as Azotobacter, Beijerinckia, and Clostridium; and mutualistic (symbiotic) bacteria such as Rhizobium, associated with leguminous plants, and various Azospirillum species, associated with cereal grasses.
The roots of an Austrian winter pea plant (Pisum sativum) with nodules harbouring nitrogen-fixing bacteria (Rhizobium). Root nodules develop as a result of a symbiotic relationship between rhizobial bacteria and the root hairs of the plant.
The symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria invade the root hairs of host plants, where they multiply and stimulate the formation of root nodules, enlargements of plant cells and bacteria in intimate association. Within the nodules, the bacteria convert free nitrogen to ammonia, which the host plant utilizes for its development. To ensure sufficient nodule formation and optimum growth of legumes (e.g., alfalfa, beans, clovers, peas, and soybeans), seeds are usually inoculated with commercial cultures of appropriate Rhizobium species, especially in soils poor or lacking in the required bacterium.
I mean people probably told this before, but: the reason why your videos are great (beside the obvious great explanations and interesting content itself) is your editing & cutting. I mean it looks so simple... and it is probably not :D
thanks for that effort (and of course for you making these videos overall) 👍
The Moltex nuclear reactor runs hot enough to create ammonia. Even better it’s intrinsically safe and it’s fuelled by nuclear waste. The list of advantages is so long it looks impossible. They are building a plant in Canada.
Ok fine, how does this help with our degrowth/deindustrialization/anti-capitalism goals?
Excellent video. I hope lots of high school chemistry and introductory college classes see this.
Wow, great episode. Every bio major immediately goes into the bacteria route when proton shuttle comes up.
Two things I love: science and clever, carefully constructed edits. 👏👏
two other things i like are leela's arguments.
Peak-shavers!
The BIG problem with renewable energy is its storage through winter. You could overproduce 300% with photovoltaics to ensure you meet your minimum quota in winter. ..but how do you amortize the cost? What can you do with the excess you produce in summer towards a payback?
*Any* useful consumption of peak-energy would potentially help solve this dilemma/problem. A basement-grade ammonia-maker (along with aluminium-refinement) may just fit the bill.
Renewable energy does not mean solar.
Wind does not stop in winter.
@@ireallyreallyhategoogle I can place between 8 and 40 solar panels on my roof * back yard. As of today, I am not allowed to place a windmill on my roof.
The "peak shaving" I describe is equally suitable for wind, as it is for solar, or any other opportunistic energy-harvesting technique.
@@AdityaMehendale You're talking about residential autonomy, but i was thinking more along the lines of national power generation.
I'm from Québec and we have nationalized hydroelectricity.
Between hydroelectricity, solar electricity, wind electricity and nuclear electricity, a country can easily produce enough power for its own needs and for export to neighbouring countries.
If all countries did this, humanity would have more than enough energy.
As for long term storage, we have batteries and if necessary we can produce hydrogen that can then be burned to produce electricity.
@@ireallyreallyhategoogle No matter, any non-deterministic power-source must be over-dimensioned, to be able to get by in lean times. Being able to utilize/amortize the peak production into something useful (like ammonia) seems like a win-win.
Urea is a nitrogen fertilizer made from ammonia and carbon dioxide that is in solid form. It could be used to match up the supply of power to the demand for fertilizer, which is mainly in spring and early summer in the northern hemisphere. The current challenge is that Haber-Bosch process has to be run at mostly a steady state and the equipment is expensive so it is run constantly 24x7x52.
Mature adult watching this video: This is a topic of interest to me, I'll suffer through the cutesy antics and parse out the useless information.
Me: When I'm done watching this I'm going to post this comment.
Sounds like most types of nuclear plants are pretty much perfectly suited to make ammonia with the old Haber Bosh.
In a carbon neutral way I mean. I guess that's why Copenhagen atomics is playing into that side of decarbonization as well.
But the new process does seem very nice. Now only to find out a way to make it efficiently reversible and you've also solved the energy storage issue which is not talked about nearly enough with renewables.
Nitrogen fertilizer is awful no matter how you make it. There's plenty of nitrogen fixing bacteria that will do the job and then some if we stopped killing the soil and washing it away. Over 50% of nitrogen is lost due to poor irrigation practices.
@@philipm3173 I'd rather eat if it's all the same so I'm all up for making extra. The chemistry is clear, it's an energy intensive process no matter how you do it, so even bacteria are going to be slow with it (unless they don't make it and only retain it).
But yea, I'm not particularly interested in irrigation practices and fertilizer, I'm more interested in the ammonia for fossil fuel replacement and energy storage reasons.
Couldn't agree more with your nuclear option
It's (briefly) mentioned that the molecular hydrogen source for the Haber-Bosch process comes from fossil fuels. So even if the heating power is provided by nuclear, it's still a fossil fuel dependent process. Hence why it's important that the new process is looking at using water electrolysis for obtaining hydrogen.
@@ionparticle Electrolysis isn't an unknown process. It's well understood and VERY easily done. All you need is a rather large ammount of energy which is something that nuclear reactors ALSO very readily provide.
That's why I said the nuclear plants are good for the carbon neutral way of Haber Bosch. The process doesn't care where the hydrogen comes from it's just energetically a lot easier to get it off of fossil fuels. Not a problem if you have a LOT of energy and some water.
When I read about this last year they were saying they were making micromoles per square square centimeter. I don't remember the details but it seemed to me you were going to either be able to wrap this stuff very tightly or it was going to take a lot of space to make a usable amount of ammonia.
Per unit of time would be helpful.
Sq cm can add up quickly if cubed. If it's micro moles per sq cm or rather cubic cm then a volume 10cm×10cm×10cm might produce 1000 times 1cm cubed. Certainly though scaling the surface area well along with all the processes is going to be a challenge.
How much does it cost per unit output versus Haber-Bosch? At the end of the day that's all that will matter in whether it gets adopted or not.
Initially it'll be expensive but it'll be cheaper than HB process in future inevitably.
If it ends up being significantly smaller than a Haber-Bosch plant then that can probably encourage its adoption even if it's more expensive per unit output since the initial capital investment would be smaller. This would probably mean that third world countries that have been reliant on imports will adopt them for the same reason that solar and wind has seen pretty heavy adoption in the third world because it's smaller and thus easier to install.
There is a simple resolution to all these energy concerns...NUCLEAR! It is by far the most energy-efficient, and even the waste is highly valuable. Although it's commonly not known, nuclear power plants have the potential to make a ludicrous amount of hydrogen for very cheap. Again, I see the Haber-Bosch process as an incredible feat, that may never be changed, however, it is the process by which the ammonia is made that is the problem. Therein, POWER THE PROCESS WITH NUCLEAR!
You gotta be careful when and where you use the n word.
The first nuclear plants were designed solely for the production of plutonium, with the heat produced being entirely rejected to the atmosphere. Electricity is just a side product. Nuclear plants are a government concoction for making weapons. Nuclear would be a more legitimate solution if Thorium were the fissile material.
I find your smarmy put-downs of some of the greatest achievements of the 20th century astounding. Unbearable to watch such unearned smugness.
>
Of course.
It all boils down to the poor solubility of nitrogen in any liquid substrate and its poor conductivity. There are numerous thermodynamically feasible reactions, but non of them are kinetically competent enough for mass industrial production.
On the spouse thing, it pains to say that she was perhaps one of the first women to earn a PhD in Chemistry, and she definitely deserved better!
It's a shame that cover group generation of nitrates by the sacrificial growth of plants like the fodder radish has not been adopted more widely. This not only provides nitrogen to the following crop but also fixes carbon dioxide acting as a carbon compost so increasing the absorption of rainfall events and increasing the porosity of the soil and increases its microbiome. QED. See articles by the Cover Crop Association of USA.
And having bacteria store the nitrogen in their bodies, it stays with the plants, you don't have nitrogen getting into the water supply.
Farming was a biological exercise over 100 years ago then chemical fertilizer was introduced, increasing yields. Then came increasing pests and diseases. Then came pesticides to fight them.
Farming now is addicted to chemicals which cost billions, making farmer's profit margin is so thin they have to rely on economy of scale to survive.
Sure, yields are big but costs are bigger.
The biggest cost is soil destruction by tilling and artificial chemicals, these kill the life in the soil.
Farmers need to learn about the "Soil Food Web". Then work with nature, restoring the life in the soil. Why?
Then farmers can grow healthier crops that pests won't attack, producing healthier food with lower costs.
Agriculture: it's biology not chemistry!
The over use of chemical fertilizer is generally the norm. A large percentage of the nitrogen fertilizer is washed down to the ocean.
Farmers pay for fertilizer, so they don't typically want to apply it if they don't get a return. For the most part, nitrogen fertilizer isn't the nutrient that causes problem in the ocean.
Very informative. Thanks!
This is really interesting, I'm no chemist but I could understand your presentation. Thakyou very much.
6:13 hey, it's looking like a throwback to the Frank-Caro process! Technically the first to synthetic ammonia, though not actually viable in practice like the Haber-Bosch Process.
4:15 you didn't consider the best, most abundant renewable energy to run the Haber-Bosch process: nuclear fission. It's clean, doesn't emitt GHGs, always on, and doesn't pollute the environment.
This commentator sounds like a refugee from Salon magazine.
I still love how well we have set up this system we have of sending all the nutrients from dry land back into the oceans: We grow food and strip the nutrients from it, send the bulk of it to each coast to be cycled through human digestive tracts, and then flush it out to sea.
BRILLIANT!
A very interesting video. You mentioned farmers in the future might have a scaled up version of this, but how would they generate 50 atm of pressure, which I think you mentioned at the end of the video?
This device operates at 15 atm, as opposed to the ~200 atm of Haber-Bosch. The idea with farmers making it themselves is that it could be done on a much smaller scale than the giant industrial production we currently do, cutting out the need for ammonia transport and storage.
15 atm = 220 psi, which is within the range of some standard compressors running on house current/voltage.
~220psi is very doable in a farm or home setting with the right equipment, which I would think would be prebuilt and tested.
@@BackYardScience2000I'd think a refrigerator compressor or 2 could do it pretty effectively.
Your car A/C compressor runs about 225-275PSI on the High side for comparison. Farm vehicle hydraulics run 5000PSI easy.
Now this is neat - the idea that we could all cook our own fertilizer for our own gardens is pretty compelling. I definitely like technologies that can be "grass rooted" like that and don't involve big corporations that are critical for the whole game.
2% of total CO2 production but you can feed almost everybody? That does not sound that bad imho
I love your presentation, faily light but to the point. Please make many more videos.
Where I grew up next to a dairy farm, cow poo was the fertilizer of choice. Worked amazing well with a bit of crop rotation. I guess these complicated natural systems just don't work with industrial farming.
industrial farming needs (well, they think they need) simple and continuous--fertiliser from a bag or truck, no rotation.
In his "The Wealth of Nations" Adam Smith identified one of the keys to the wealth of nation as MANURE.
Manure was tended with about the same care as crops.
The mechanical reaper of Cyrus McCormick changed the way crops were grown. The development of the manure spreader did something similar for farmers.
The Haber Bosch process did not just prevent some speculative future food shortage, it changed the situation from the vast majority of people on earth at least periodically starving, to eventually the food abundance becoming a common problem. Huge increase in life expectancy, plummeting starvation-related health issues, we even started to grow significantly taller, on average, because so many peoples growth stopped being limited by starvation. Other advances have been important in this, but practical industrial nitrogen fixation is the foundation. And don't forget, using synthetic fertilizers is the main alternative to slash-and-burn and other forms of very destructive agriculture. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch in biology either.
About free lunches, the energy required to break up N2, and produce the hydrogen will always be required, you literally dismissed using renewable energy for the Haber Bosch process, in large part because of the high fundamental energy demand, that there can't be a workaround for, and went on to claim the "killer" could use renewable energy. There's potentially possible to reduce losses, but they're not that much of a problem as it is. The argument about the intermittency of renewable energy making it useless for the Haber Bosch process requires off-grid direct system to be valid.
It could be a practical solution to produce methane from hydrogen produced by electrolysis, and storing that methane to feed Haber Bosch process. Another process step, a little more cost, and energy losses, but not that significant, and kind of irrelevant compared to the fact that we know that it works, and how to do it. And, the intermittency of renewables is not that big of a deal, recent energy crisis in Europe was mostly due to dependence on fossil fuels, and nuclear power. The drought obviously also caused problems for hydropower, which is renewable, and that contributed to make the issue worse, but hydropower is usually reliably controllable.
I would definitely consider significantly improved efficiency a significant overall improvement, and if it could be scaled down to very small "cheap" units that can run or be stopped at will without problems that would be a great thing, but that being an option is another level of speculation.
Many thanks for this very valuable info! What is the expected overall electrical efficiency of this new process? compared to the one currently used for green ammonia, i.e: N2 generated by cryodistillation, H2 by electrolysis and ammonia generated by a High Pressure “Haber Bosch” synthesis? Don’t forget ammonia is extremely toxic. I am therefore very skeptical it can be generated by individuals in their garden.
it is in no way safe enough for home production. Could be made so, with good engineering.
Awesome video. I can only partly understand the chemical equations, but your explanations were great.
its sadly not yet scalable but there are several versions of this more portable haber bosch like nitrogen fixations all using lithium in some way.
I like the one using a 2 phase conductive electrolyte of dimethylaniline and aqueous lithium hydroxide with lithium as the electrode and nitrogen as feed and a porous seperator.
As a proton shuttle I first thought of a weak acid, for example H2CO3.
Can you explain why the pressure is needed?
Some reactions just need high pressure to accelerate the rate of conversion and lower the temperature( so less energy needs to be added). You can try to input regent into reactor at normal pressure but it would be very inefficient or not occur at all for some reactions.
. Good example of this is reaction of producing HCL where you put chloride gas into the water under the pressure to produce this acid.
In lower pressures some substances start to degrade rather quickly, or are in different phase.
For Haber Bosch, shifting from N2 and H+ or H2 to NH3 results in fewer total molecules, so it is favored at higher pressure.
Synthesizing the ammonia on site is a really cool idea! Shipping and transportation has such a huge environmental cost that reducing it is probably always a good idea.
Very charming and entertaining introduction of a new academic ammonia synthesis. But it´s seriously a terrible idea to use the critical elements lithium and phosphorus for ammonia generation at large scale.
The lithium works as a catalyst, and is not consumed :-)
@@melvillecapps8339 Yes, that´s right. My humble concern is that each of the many pocket sized ammonia generators contains some lithium and they all add up to a considerable total amount. In my opinion, food production could inevitably compete with the energy markets.
They're highly intertwined already. 1% or world natural gas goes into Haber process already. About 2% of total US energy consumption goes into making the diesel fuel that runs all the farm equipment and food transport. Estimates are that 45% of corn farming in the US is used to produce ethanol motor fuel.
@@TD_YT066 This is a could example of how important it is to see the big picture.❤
12:42 "It's tiny" "Farmers could make it by themselves on demand." You have only shown the reaction cell and a backpressure regulator, not the containers to store the reactants, the pumps and compressors to get the reactants to 15atm, the equipment to separate the NH3 and recycle the electrolyte and the catalyst. Sounds like it is a membrane process which does not lend itself to economies of scale. How much NH3 does the reaction cell shown make per day? Show me a heat and material balance for a complete process from raw materials to finished products. As a practicing chemical engineer, I spent much of 40 years trying to scale-up reactions in test-tubes from a chemist's lab bench to commercial scale processes The chemists always insisted scale-up would be "simple". Scale-up is never simple. 1 in 100 of the processes I worked on made it into the real world. I very much appreciate the need for replacing Haber-Bosch, but proclamations about scale-up should be left to the AIChE not the ACS.
I don't understand any of the chemistry but still love these videos! But, if I follow you, one day I will be able to stick probes in the planting holes that connect to that controller unit and auto fertilize my tomatoes with nitrogen made on site. Awesome! let me know when you have that affiliate link, hehe
There are plants which have symbiotic bacteria on the roots that do it for you for free (maybe not as efficient as chemicals but still)
If only we can get this to the point where farmers can make their own ammonia from wind and solar energy on their farms.
Then farmers wouldn't need to transport ammonia in big tanks over the road. That might save money and increase safety and might reduce insurance and transportation cost and eliminate the need for Ammonia nurse tanks, along with the benifit that they can source the energy from local renewable energy.
Our population exploded *because* of Haber-Bosch, not it was a solution to a growing population.
The lithium reduction process, the electrolysis of water and other things are bad explained and incomplete but at least now im going to search about the process
Yay new reactions video!!!
Faradayic efficiency (quantum efficiency) is just one thing, potential efficiency is the other. You get 98% of the current well used, doesn't mean you get no wasted voltage.
Your perspective on Fritz Haber is intriguing. It's true that poison gas was generally considered less effective than mustard gas, and both sides used these weapons during World War I. If you view Haber unfavorably, then by the same reasoning, you might consider Oppenheimer a butcher. His development of nuclear weapons resulted in even deadlier consequences. However, it's worth noting that both individuals were acting in accordance with their governments' directives.
As a side note, it's estimated that poison gas caused approximately 10,000 deaths out of the 10 million fatalities during World War I.
Regarding your mention of CO2 production, you rightly point out that the increased plant yield from fertilizer can absorb carbon dioxide. This aspect is not accounted for in the 1% CO2 production figure.
In one word, Wow! I was not aware of a lithium catalyzed ammonia production process. About the only way to better this process is to bio-engineer an algae that can do the process with sunlight, water and nitrogen. Thanks for the article.
7:20 positrons in the reaction formula, instead of elections...
Whoops! Good catch.
and also someone forgot to divide the equation by 3...
You have elections in 2024! I agree with your point about positrons, although the mistake is corrected later in the video.
When I was young I tried to set ½ dl of Magnesium on fire - all at once. I went outside heated it with a burner in a metal cup and was hoping for it would go off - in a white boom - all at the same time. Instead it just sat there glowing green and nothing happened. So I went inside and threw it in the sink and flushed it with water, and to my surprise the house almost exploded in a ammonia. I guess this is a similar reaction.
I don't like the way he talks. He's just too arrogant. He spent the whole video trashing Haber's process just to present a new "promising" research. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the new process, but the host makes it look like it's gonna change the world with no further evidence, just because you can do it in the lab doesn't mean you'll build a factory out of it. If you are in science you know that. And last but not least, the way he shows off both papers in Nature and Science represent everything that's wrong with science today. Thousand of papers have been published in both journals and most of them end up being just that, a research paper and nothing less. Nowadays people are more focused in how many papers they have than in the actual value of their research. I've know people with over 400 papers that can't even remember most of them.
I think it's clear that this isn't meant to be a chemist showing his chemist buddies new promising research and going ultra into detail talking about how it all works, it's a video meant for a very broad and general audience. And most people are not super educated on chemistry, so if he spoke like a chemist then the idea of the video would go right over people's heads. I would also like a video that went into detail but for most people they wouldn't understand a thing.
@@thatguyfromw1rk983 I don’t know chemistry. I still feel like the video was over-edited? Jumping between scenes mid-sentence too often. (Not entirely against such jumps, but going back-and forth between locations like this without any clear point, is distracting?)
And, like,
as I mentioned, I don’t know much chemistry. But I do think it would have been nice to show a diagram of the bonds in the Li_6N_2 ? Like, is it the thing I’m expecting, with 3 lithium atoms singly bonded to each of the nitrogen atoms, with a single bond between the two nitrogen atoms?
I also found it off-putting that he repeatedly expressed distaste for haber-boch process without, like, saying anything about why?
But my main complaint is that it seems scripted for an audience with a tiny attention span the way it has a cut every 20 seconds? (I haven’t actually counted the cuts, 20 seconds is probably hyperbole.)
@@drdca8263 Lithium nitride is ionic, so you wouldn't normally draw a diagram. It's a crystal structure where there are three times as many lithium atoms as nitrogens, but the lithium atoms aren't singly bonded to any given nitrogen. The nitrogen has essentially all of the electron density and carries a -3 charge and the lithium atoms have lost their valence electrons and have +1 charges.
@@kastonmurrell6649 Oh! Thank you!
Yeah, the way the host mindlessly dunks on Haber Bosch shows that he probably has very little knowledge on the subject matter. People without training in Thermodynamics very often severely underestimate just how unyielding the rule of the thermodynamic pecking order is...
Thanks for the informative and quirky video. As an ecologist, I'd say we only need this large scale industrial process because we allow too much fertilizer to mineralize back into the atmosphere in the first place, and have degenerated our topsoil, where naturally, symbiotic protozoic bacteria in the rhizosphere have been fixing atmospheric N₂ for millennia. We should not need any technological process for N-fixing if we were stewarding nature better. But as things stand, a process that can run in a decentralized fashion, empowering farmers and making them less dependent on corporates, is still much preferable to the way things are now and an encouraging prospect.
If this process is as promising as you say then every scientists in a even remotely related field should be working on making this a reality.
....and since they all are not, what might you divine?
Moonshine stills aren't illegal, you just have to get a license and agree to periodic inspections.
I don’t know anything about chemistry, and I am severely mathematically challenged😳, but I loved your simple explanations and sense of humor. Subscribed!
Hating on the Haber Bosch process is bizarre. It’s like hating your mother for not aborting you.
great video ! really great presenting style also.
Be very surprised if this takes off and farmers start making it on site, gunna be super easy to make explosives without material tracking then...
Scaled oxidation to nitrate is expensive and complicated as well. I think we're good for now.
For a process that feeds 50% of the world, 1% of the global energy production and 2% of the CO2 emissions dont sound really bad.
And we already have means of fixing renewable energies fluctions for decades: pumped storage power plants.
Regarding comparing the CO2 output of fertilizer production with the airline industry:
What do you think is more important? Eating or long distance travel?
Mm, it's an important point: Haber-Bosch is not fundamentally wasteful in the same way airline travel is. It's really in the same boat as construction requiring concrete and steel, both of which produce CO2 chemically in their construction. It's a four square grid right, you have things that are Green and Necessary (woo!), Green but Unnecessary (ok), CO2 emitting but Unnecessary (alright, lets see about giving some of these up), and CO2 emitting but Necessary (tricky...). There are ideas being built up (green steel, reducing the iron using hydrogen gas instead of carbon monoxide from coal, renewable energy, and this video topic), but they're kinda early days yet, and we haven't really managed to fully transition yet, but there's some hope.
An internet search came up with the cost of (sodium) bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide at $100 per gram, or $100 million per tonne. It's not clear how much would be needed, but the main concern is the rate of degradation through the reaction cycle. My guess is that Haber-Bosch is safe for a while yet.
Great video. What is the Faradaic efficiency of the Haber Bosch process? I think if you're comparing that would be an important point of comparison. (Unless I missed it.)
I would be interested in hearing how Lithium could be a good material to use in a process of this scale if there is worldwide pressure on Lithium supply due to it being the main constituent in batteries that are powering the sustainable energy revolution.
HB doesn't have faradic yeld, it is not an electrochemical process.
Lithium is already in high demand for making the batteries of electric cars, so it doesn't work.
The ability to make ammonia efficiently in small batches has a very important implication: It is no longer necessary to ship ammonia in large quantities. The only reason most people have heard of East Palestine, Ohio is because vinyl chloride cannot be produced at the consumption site. Every chemical we can take off of the shipping schedule makes our industry more environmentally-friendly.
Woke channel. The new processing is not better. More expensive harder to implement.
this is why i scroll.. no subscribing.
Yup, Doug MacFarlane's group at Monash University is worth keeping an eye on. MacFarlane is actually focusing on production of ammonia as an energy export commodity for Australia, since Oz get lots of solar energy, but can't currently export the excess energy to other places in the world which need it. There's a huge push Down Under to find ways of turning that excess solar gain into a credit for their balance of trade. Ammonia is a pretty good energy carrier, can be directly combusted in IC engines, can be split to release the hydrogen if desired, has existing infrastructure in the way of pipelines and bulk carriers, etc. Of course, it's also very useful as fertilizer.
Roger Gordon's pressure-swing-adsorption process is another one to watch. He's looking to market his method to small scale on-site users (read, "farmers"). His patents are lookable-uppable, and there are a couple of YT videos featuring his explanation of the process. He originated his method for on-site production of ammonia for pharmaceutical feedstock, but realized there were applications beyond that. He's been running passenger vehicles on ammonia for a decade or so.
I've got a way to end the Haber Bosch process. It's called better farming processes.
Yep, smaller scale, more numerous organic (backyard) farms
go implement it then! do better farming make more profit and show them what you can do. Put your money where your mouth is!
Lemme know when you think the world's poor can afford doubled food prices.
"Farmers could make it themselves", and that is where 'big fertilizer' swooped in and bought the patents. Never to be seen again.
Patents expire. People know that, right? And you could just do it in a country that doesn't enforce IP law.
Leave the farmers alone.
Almost all farmers use anhydrous ammonia to put nitrogen into the soil when you put two crops of corn back to back. Rotating crops eliminates the need for it. The main reason for not rotating crops is because irrigated plots of land are wasted by anything other than corn.
Why no research to directly oxidize nitrogen and produce nitric acid?
Especially to have a better yield than the BIRKELAND EYDE process
100 years ago there were only 2B humans gorging on the resources of this planet.
That's right. Population has _quadrupled_ in the last 1,000th of the species existence
Hell, there were only 3 billion people when i was born, and today there's *_8._*
While im 100% for energy efficiency the thought of _more_ induced demand horrifies me.
Thankfully there is a needed negative feedback loop. With more food farmed by fewer people, more people move to urban environments. On the farm, kids are free labor, but in the city, they are expensive luxury goods. As such, birth rates drop with urbanization. Most of the slightly affluent countries have sub-replacement birthrates.
so the main issue I can see with this, one those compounds needed are cost and safety. Its great and all if it can be replaced on a lab setting, but if fertilizer prices jump due to this due to expensive compounds you really havent done much to help anyone [plus the current HB process is cheap due to the materials needed to do it are common place unlike these compounds].
Plus safety is always important more so if your dealing with small scale production. Still this looks cool so best of luck to this project and process.
H2 gas can be isolated from electrolysis by trapping the gas produced from the anode
Side note on poison gas usage in World War I, as pointed out in The Great War TH-cam channel, the French were the first nation to use gas in this war in 1914. It was tear gas, ethyl bromoacetate, not poison gas. Lethal gases were used later.
Well, given France was barely holding the line at that point they get a free pass
@@noname-wo9yy I don't give them a free pass but seeing as this was tear gas and not poison gas they get do get a limp dish rag punishment
Seriously, flamethrowers are allowed, but I don't see that much of a difference, when it comes to cruelties.
Loved the bit with “Imagine if we were still flying the plane the Wright brothers invented” “that would be a problem”.
I would say that the development of aircraft and the industrial development of the Haber Bosch process have seen similar, dramatic changes over 100 plus years. Chemists and chemical engineers have refined the process of making ammonia to a staggering degree, just as mechanical engineers and aeronautical engineers have made staggering improvements in aircraft.
The idea that the process of making ammonia has been stagnant for a hundred years is LUDICROUS.
This is just an expression of the commentators political prejudice.
My question is can the cells be designed to be supply following? A large part of the problem with the Haber Bosch process when used with interruptables is that current industrial plants need to be run at steady state. Can it be started up in the daytime when the sun is shining and shutdown at night when it is not? Can it be idled if there is a wind drought or you've met the economic need for the year? AFAIK, electrolyzers do have the benefit that they can be started up and shutdown depending on the supply of electricity. Do these cells have that property?
The explanation, including the gestures, gives me some prof. Ted Mosby vibes, I love it!!
The thing with haber-bosch is that is a very simple process and with no big byproducts whatsoever. Aside from the so called CO2 emissions that could be worked out with renewables, haber-bosch is a very clean process, and that's why is still around. The big issue on my pov is energy consumption and practicality (temp and pressure is not very elegant).
Fritz Haber was a very cool guy. He managed to get the French out of the trench really quick!
Well the original Haber device to demonstrate the process was equally small, and not truly efficient.
But it showed the way.
The problem with anhydrous ammonia is. When the gas is injected into the soil. Within moments healthy soil will break the nitrogen from the gas and the soil bacteria converts it into a nitrate. The nitrate and hydrogen bonds with the soil and the hydrogen stay in the soil until it is removed removed. The plants absorb the nitrate from the soil helping the plants to grow big and strong.
The major problem is the hydrogen. It stays in the soil after several years there is enough hydrogen locked in the soil that it becomes very hard. Called hard pan. Soil cultivation has a very hard time breaking up the hard pan. Plants have difficulty growing through it. Eventually the soil becomes a hard rock like consistency that crops can’t grow in.