A simple and eco-friendly way to make ammonia

Due to some newly discovered and not-yet-explained property of microdroplets (like a very high surface area:mass ratio) they readily react with air to produce peroxide, H2O2. The theory I’m describing, based on experiments testing peroxide formation at varying ozone concentration, is that the water molecules are reacting with the small amounts of ozone commonly present in air.

In chemistry, some molecular configurations are very stable and some are very unstable. Unstable things tend to react with other things in such a way that total stability increases; when it happens, energy is released (exothermic). Going from a stable configuration to an unstable one requires either a counterparty that was super unstable and became less so while reacting (still exothermic), or an input of energy (endothermic - basically never happens at equilibrium unless you’re directly applying high heat). However, just because a reaction is more stable at the end than the beginning doesn’t mean it will just occur, because in reality there are several stages the participants need to go through over an imperceptibly small time scale, some of which may actually require an input of energy to reach (activation energy).

Ozone is highly unstable but in air at STP, unless it meets another ozone, none of the normal molecules in air will react with it because they’re all super stable already (even N2, idk if the reaction can technically be exothermic but it has super high activation energy if it does) or O2 which couldn’t help it get more stable. It seems like new research suggests ozone can react with water at STP to form peroxide (H202). Water is normally quite stable by itself, but H2O2 isn’t.

I don’t think the proposed mechanism in the paper makes sense but my guess is that one catalyst is causing peroxide to decompose into H2 and O2 while releasing energy, as it is wont to do. Then we get the haber process H2+N2 reaction, which is technically exothermic but with very high activation energy. But fortunately the fresh H2 molecule has a lot of energy and the second catalyst helps reduce the requirements further. And 3H2 + N2 = 2NH3 which is ammonia.

Quick search says 1.2kg/kWh theoretical max: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00422...

Each ozone molecule at 48g/mol I think will map to 2/3 of an ammonia molecule at 17g/mol. So you’d get 0.23kg NH3/kWh. And I found a link saying the actual Haber Bosch energy usage requires 26GJ/ton which is 3.6kWh/kg or 0.27kg NH3/kWh: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/haber-bosch...

Anybody feel free to check my math. Worth noting actual Ozone yields are supposedly much lower than theoretical maxes at around 12% efficiency (which may require cryo temps and pure oxygen under pressure) bringing yield down to 0.03kg NH3/kWh. Doesn’t seem to take lower electricity in practice considering this is only one energy requirement vs the haber Bosch process counting the full energy input, though maybe it’s less capital intensive. I guess Ozone is deceptively hard to make because the little ozone generators we use as disinfectants require very little actual ozone to do their job.

I've encountered less about rice, but the transitional practices I described can be used in the (otherwise conventional) growing of corn and wheat and can produce comparable yields for lower cost to the farmer, directly in the case of reduced fertilizer cost, but especially when you factor in reduced losses to drought events from the ability for high organic matter soil to absorb and retain water, as well as greater resilience to disease and pest wipeouts due to healthier plants and a more diverse farm ecosystem. It's all somewhat anecdotal, though, since this sort of thing resists formal research, both from the funding angle (doesn't lead to profitable results for industry; not sexy/high-tech enough for ambitious academics and their departments) and the experimental design angle (too many variables; farmers are all trying out different things in different ways and different climates).

From the permaculture/food forest/holistic side, you can certainly vastly beat the economic output of conventional agriculture (e.g. just growing corn) on a $/acre basis when you integrate all the possible enterprises available (meat, eggs, vegetables, herbs, fruit, wood products, flowers, ecotourism, etc.). I'm not sure in terms of marketable calories per acre, i.e. stuff human beings actually want to eat, but I'd think at least within an order of magnitude of corn (eggs go a long way). But you're right, the bottleneck is availability of farmers, since one farmer with machinery can grow hundreds of acres of corn or wheat at millions of calories per acre. I think it's fair to say there's plenty of opportunity for people to become farmers if they want to, though, in that information is more accessible than ever and there's land available.

We do have the example of Gabe Brown [0], who I believe manages 1000+ acres regeneratively with only his family for labor. I don't recall any attempts to calculate his kcal/acre, though. Farmers are understandably more concerned with $/acre.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExXwGkJ1oGI

I'm guessing it's just endothermic, and relies on the energy probability distribution on these droplets to have some atoms of high enough energy to react.

I did a deep dive in seeing how this is even possible, because it shouldn’t be thermodynamically, and it seems like all this “microdroplets allow for seemingly impossible reactions by spontaneously forming peroxide” is actually caused by ozone per some researchers: https://cen.acs.org/research-integrity/reproducibility/Claim...

This seems to be an open debate topic in chemistry. But I think it’s basically the case that, everybody knows it has to be ozone because the energy must be coming from somewhere, but knowing it’s ozone makes the dependent studies like this uninteresting (saying “who knows how we seemingly produced ammonia with little power, maybe this will cure climate change” gets your papers a lot more citations and recognition than “there is enough ozone in the air to produce small quantities of peroxide to use in reactions at STP”). Until it’s conclusively debunked people are gonna landgrab any paper that says “water violates all known laws of thermodynamics when you make it a microdroplet” to further their careers

It seems much more likely this breakthrough will come from alternative methods of extracting hydrogen, than re-inventing the Haber process.

I don't normally ask for explanations of downvotes, but all three sentences in this seem uncontroversial?

I was more interested if the supply of nitrogen in a local area would be effected. could you do it constantly in a shed or would you need some vents to pump fresh air in?

Ack. You're correct. Thanks for doing what you do.