SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The production of one of the key raw materials for fertilizer, ammonia (NH3) or nitrogen oxide (NOx), is a very energy-intensive process that is responsible for about 2% of all global CO2 emissions. However, it is hardly possible any longer to cut the energy consumption via current production processes since the theoretically minimal feasible energy consumption has already been more or less reached.
So the Indian PhD candidate [Bhaskar S.] Patil sought alternative methods to produce ammonia and nitrogen oxides for his PhD research, building two types of reactor, the Gliding Arc (GA) reactor and the Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) reactor. In his experiments the GA reactor in particular appeared to be the most suited to producing nitrogen oxides. In this reactor, under atmospheric pressure, a plasma-front (a kind of mini lightning bolt) glides between two diverging metal surfaces, starting with a small opening (2 mm) to a width of 5 centimeters. This expansion causes the plasma to cool to room temperature. During the trajectory of the 'lightning', the nitrogen (N2) and oxygen (O2) molecules react in the immediate vicinity of the lightning front to nitrogen oxides (NO and NO2).
Patil optimized this reactor and at a volume of 6 liters per minute managed to achieve an energy consumption level of 2.8 MJ/mole, quite an improvement on the commercially developed methods that use approximately 0.5 MJ/mole. With the theoretical minimum of Patil's reactor, however, being that much lower (0.1 MJ/mole), in the long term this plasma technique could be an energy-efficient alternative to the current energy-devouring ammonia and nitrate production. An added benefit is that Patil's method requires no extra raw materials and production can be generated on a small scale using renewable energy, making his technique ideally suited for application in remote areas that have no access to power grids, such as parts of Africa, for instance.
[...] Apart from use at remote farms, this technique can also be used to stimulate the growth of plants in greenhouses and to store sustainable energy in liquid fuels.
The PhD research of Patil was financially supported by the EU MAPSYN consortium.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @07:26PM
Weaponize nitrogen in the air! DEATH to AMERICA. Allaluhu Akbarri! Lah lah lah lah lah lah lah!1Q!!
Die all infidel scum!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 17 2017, @07:28PM (11 children)
I produce fertilizer when I pee. It's free. Also, I can do other things while my body processes water and waste to produce it, so it's better than free.
Can I get a grant?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday May 17 2017, @07:30PM (4 children)
How many megaton per day do you pee? :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @07:49PM
Gigaton when I mix coffee and prune juice.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 17 2017, @08:26PM (2 children)
I'd say about one, but I wind up drinking half of it again because "it's sterile, and I like the taste."
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday May 18 2017, @07:03AM
My reasoning would be like: "If my body flushes it, there is probably a good reason not to introduce it back". But, whatever works for you peebag :)
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @12:32PM
While that is true (it's filtered for pathogens), it's full of salts.
Drinking salt water for any amount of time will screw you up.
The ship that delivered the A-bomb to Tinian was sunk on its return trip.
No one was keeping track of it and the hundreds of survivors were left in the water for days in extreme heat (and in shark-infested waters).
Some couldn't stand the thirst any more and drank seawater. [google.com]
That didn't go well.
First they went nuts then their other bodily systems shut down.
In a survival situation, you can recycle your pee with great efficiency using a solar-powered distillery. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @08:49PM (3 children)
The way we think of human waste as "waste" is, in a word, wasteful.
For starters, Toilets Don't Need To Use Water [counterpunch.org]
Composting our "waste" and recycling it as fertilizer is a solution that many have found.
Composting Toilets Have Been Viable For Decades (They Cut Household Water Usage By 40 percent) [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [alternet.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @06:48AM (2 children)
Can someone explain how this would work in my apartment block?
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Thursday May 18 2017, @07:23AM
I'd tell you, but you'd just say my explanation was a pile of shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @10:49AM
A Guide to Composting Toilets [motherearthliving.com]
Image search [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @06:51AM
I detect bullshit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @07:01AM
Seriously, is there any reason why pee is not repurposed as fertilizer? if you think because ITS GROSS, think again what earth is made of.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by kaszz on Wednesday May 17 2017, @07:28PM
managed to achieve an energy consumption level of 2.8 MJ/mole, quite an improvement on the commercially developed methods that use approximately 0.5 MJ/mole
How can using more energy be better?
And how do they go from NO and NO2 into solid fertilizer?
Anyway.. This could be a use case for excess wind and solar production.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Wednesday May 17 2017, @07:32PM (1 child)
> achieve an energy consumption level of 2.8 MJ/mole, quite an improvement on the commercially developed methods that use
> approximately 0.5 MJ/mole. With the theoretical minimum of Patil's reactor, however, being that much lower (0.1 MJ/mole),
Methinks using more energy isn't an improvement. The new lower theoretical value is.
> making his technique ideally suited for application in remote areas that have no access to power grids, such as parts of Africa, for instance
O the irony!
Being a PhD from India, using Africa as an example of a place with underdeveloped corners is ... interesting.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @08:05PM
Being a PhD from India, using Africa as an example of a place with underdeveloped corners is ... interesting.
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20030718
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday May 17 2017, @08:05PM
People struggle to produce NOx? I think Volkswagen has a solution. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @08:26PM
For a while, folks were trying to use plasma to treat diesel exhaust to reduce the NOx emissions. [google.com]
As the focus went to cleaner fuels and electric vehicles, the funding for NOx research dried up.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by halcyon1234 on Wednesday May 17 2017, @08:39PM (1 child)
Original Submission [thedailywtf.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @08:52PM
Of course the American air is shitty when we have so many tech workers shitting in the street.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @09:48PM (4 children)
We used to do just this. It's easy, and there are youtube videos for it. Build a "Jacob's ladder" out of copper pipe, put it in a container, pump air in via one pipe, let the air coming out the other pipe bubble through water, and there you go. That makes nitric acid.
We ditched it for the Haber process many decades ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @10:22PM
Everything old is millennial again.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @01:56AM
I came to say the same thing about the Haber process. The 5x is theoretical. A quick search on Wikipedia says the Birkeland process would yield 15MWH/Ton of 4% nitric acid. It's been awhile but I'll try it... by weight % that means 15MWH/0.04Ton NO3, at 64g/mol it works out to roughly 92MJ/mol (mega, not kilo). So this might not be better but it does appear to be a giant leap for chemicals from air.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @04:18AM (1 child)
The brute-force method wastes a lot of energy.
You want non-thermal plasma.
The way to do this efficiently is to have a very tall but very narrow pulse (sub 100nsec) and a low duty cycle (~20usec period).
The work is done on the leading edge of the pulse and the faster you can shut it off after reaching the peak, the better.
A purpose-built reaction cell is another good idea.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by YeaWhatevs on Thursday May 18 2017, @10:34AM
I looked up the paper (no thanks to TFA), and I shows a picture of their custom built reaction chamber and quite a bit of theory and empirical data. Assuming you got the increased efficiency plasma right, we need more experimentation to say it leads to increased efficiency in the overall yield of the chemical reaction. Knowing that N2 is a triple bond that requires a lot of energy to break gives me enough pause to think it might not be that easy.