Thank you for explaining the process, because the pro-fuel-cell pact doesn’t understand that hydrogen isn’t free.
“Oh it comes from ammonia”. Alright, where does the ammonia come from???
Comment on That's how the world works.
cogitase@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 hours ago
Natural gas is used to produce hydrogen, which is then used in the Haber-Bosch process to produce ammonia from nitrogen in the atmosphere. Only about 6% of natural gas is used to produce hydrogen, so even if the price were to rise substantially, we could divert natural gas from other uses and have plenty for making ammonia. We also have other ways of producing hydrogen, it’s just that natural gas is more established.
PEM electrolyzers paired with cheap solar in countries with high insolation can now produce hydrogen for less than the cost of natural gas, but we’re only recently starting to see the construction of the large-scale green ammonia plants needed to accomplish this. Egypt is currently constructing a 100-MW green ammonia plant powered by solar energy. Even if you didn’t have enough PEM eletrolyzers you could still just pass current through some salt water and produce hydrogen, albeit much less efficiently.
It’s not going to be a catastrophic issue.
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
Hypx@piefed.social 35 minutes ago
You’ll make hydrogen from renewable energy. That is the point.
The_v@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Farmers almost uniformly over-apply N fertilizer. Having it be more expensive and forcing them to look into more efficient ways of applying fertilizer and managing nutrients is not a bad thing.
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
Unless it just causes the crop to cost more without any change in behavior.
The_v@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Farmers are price-takers not price-makers. The prices they receive are driven by speculation on the commodities markets (even for crops not traded on the market).
Since they can’t control the price they receive for their crop, they are very sensitive to any change in the cost of inputs. Determining how much to spent on inputs is the part of their profitablity they can control. So widespread behavioral change is usually pretty close to immediate.
marcos@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
we could divert natural gas from other uses and have plenty for making ammonia. We also have other ways of producing hydrogen
We can’t do any of those in a scale large enough to replace the destruction and have it online for the next planting season on the North Hemisphere. Or the next one on the South Hemisphere either, btw. Or the following ones for each.
BodyBySisyphus@hexbear.net 6 hours ago
Also, while it’s still new, plasma nitrogen has the potential to rapidly scale if the economics stop making sense for Haber-Bosch nitrogen.
Rusty@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
Fun fact: Fritz Haber, the German guy that invented the Haber-Bosch process is the same Fritz Haber that invented the use of chlorine gas in chemical warfare. He was personally overseeing it’s effect in the battle of Ypres.
als@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
Clara Immerwahr, who was married to Fritz Haber and was a successful chemist in her own right, spoke out against his research as a “perversion of the ideals of science” and “a sign of barbarity, corrupting the very discipline which ought to bring new insights into life.” She ended her own life the day before he traveled to the eastern front to oversee the use of chlorine gas against Russian troops.
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Dude knew his chemicals
far_university1990@reddthat.com 4 hours ago
Habe
rn wir einen an der Waffel? Ja