The End of Haber Bosch

Comments · 1.3K

• AC

  @ACSReactions · 3 years ago · pinned

  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: &nbsp;<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05108-y">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05108-y</a>

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• MA

  @majorfallacy5926 · 3 years ago

  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&apos;s an instant nobel price

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• MA

  @maxmusterman3371 · 3 years ago

  Now we only need tons of Trihexyltetradecylphosphonium and Bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide, which are propably both a breeze to make

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• XX

  @xXYannuschXx · 3 years ago

  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.<br>And we already have means of fixing renewable energies fluctions for decades: pumped storage power plants.

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• HE

  @henryrroland · 3 years ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFcaEUj43OY&amp;t=214">3:34</a> 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

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• TH

  @theodoreshasta7846 · 3 years ago

  One has to be skeptical of a new process which purports to be such an enormous improvement over Haber-Bosch. &nbsp;I admit to being beyond my depth and hope every bit of it is true. &nbsp;We need all the help we can get.

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• AL

  @alyoshakaramazov8469 · 3 years ago

  When I started as a chemist, reading German was mandatory. &nbsp;I was an analytical chemist in an agricultural lab, so nitrogen chemistry was a big deal in my earliest days as a lab rat. &nbsp;A lot of the procedures we had to follow were only written in German. &nbsp;Well, that was 40 years ago. &nbsp;Maybe things are different now. &nbsp;Fortunately, technical German is not difficult for English speaking chemists.

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• CH

  @Chrisi313 · 1 year ago

  Isaac Asimov once wrote:<br>&quot;We may be able to substitute nuclear power for coal power, and plastics for wood, and yeast for meat, and friendliness for isolation—but for phosphorus there is neither substitute nor replacement.&quot;

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• BA

  @BackYardScience2000 · 3 years ago

  The story of Fritz Haber is one of the most tragic, yet gut wrenching in history. &nbsp;Veritasium has a great video on him and this process that I highly recommend watching.

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• EN

  @engineerncook6138 · 3 years ago (edited)

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFcaEUj43OY&amp;t=762">12:42</a> &quot;It&apos;s tiny&quot; &quot;Farmers could make it by themselves on demand.&quot; &nbsp;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 &nbsp;shown make per day? &nbsp; Show me a heat and material balance for a complete process from raw materials to finished products. &nbsp;As a practicing chemical engineer, I spent much of 40 years trying to scale-up reactions in test-tubes from a chemist&apos;s lab bench to commercial scale processes The chemists always insisted scale-up would be &quot;simple&quot;. &nbsp;Scale-up is never simple. &nbsp;1 in 100 of the processes I worked on made it into the real world. &nbsp;I very much appreciate the need for replacing Haber-Bosch, but proclamations about scale-up should be left to the AIChE not the ACS.

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• JO

  @johncgibson4720 · 2 years ago

  Wow, great episode. Every bio major immediately goes into the bacteria route when proton shuttle comes up.

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• MR

  @MrMoriarty100 · 2 years ago

  In other words one burns lithium in nitrogen to form lithium nitride. Then add water to form ammonia and lithium hydroxide, then dry, melt and electrolyse the lithium hydroxide to regenerate the lithium. This last stage is where the energy debt for fixing nitrogen, the metaphorical piper has to be paid.

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