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New reactor could halve carbon dioxide emissions from ammonia production | Science | AAAS
To feed more than 7 billion hungry souls, humanity relies on the century-old Haber-Bosch process to convert nitrogen from the air and methane from natural gas into ammonia, the starting material for fertilizer. But that process belches out more than 450 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually—about 1% of all human emissions, and more than any other industrial chemical reaction. Now, a new type of ceramic reactor could cut that in half. If it can be scaled up, the new technique could also lower the global price of fertilizer by making it easier to produce in small chemical plants close to where it’s used.
“I’m quite impressed,” says Karthish Manthiram, a chemical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who was not involved in the work. Invented in the early 1900s, the Haber-Bosch process uses three separate reactors to generate hydrogen from methane and then combine that hydrogen with nitrogen to make ammonia. In contrast, the new approach combines all three reactors into one. “That streamlining reduces the energy and CO2 footprint,” Manthiram says.
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Neat if it can be successfully developed. As a side note, the Haber-Bosch process provided nitric acid for explosives production for Germany during WW1 due to the British blockading imports of nitrates from Chile. The process is also the source for nitrogen fertilizer used worldwide. Haber won the Nobel Prize for this invention.
To feed more than 7 billion hungry souls, humanity relies on the century-old Haber-Bosch process to convert nitrogen from the air and methane from natural gas into ammonia, the starting material for fertilizer. But that process belches out more than 450 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually—about 1% of all human emissions, and more than any other industrial chemical reaction. Now, a new type of ceramic reactor could cut that in half. If it can be scaled up, the new technique could also lower the global price of fertilizer by making it easier to produce in small chemical plants close to where it’s used.
“I’m quite impressed,” says Karthish Manthiram, a chemical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who was not involved in the work. Invented in the early 1900s, the Haber-Bosch process uses three separate reactors to generate hydrogen from methane and then combine that hydrogen with nitrogen to make ammonia. In contrast, the new approach combines all three reactors into one. “That streamlining reduces the energy and CO2 footprint,” Manthiram says.
==================================================
Neat if it can be successfully developed. As a side note, the Haber-Bosch process provided nitric acid for explosives production for Germany during WW1 due to the British blockading imports of nitrates from Chile. The process is also the source for nitrogen fertilizer used worldwide. Haber won the Nobel Prize for this invention.