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The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler
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All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this book.Lab demo scale, sure. The research and testing of catalysts for the industrial scale was a significant part of the development effort. Lifetime of the catalyst, temperature and pressure of the reactor, input energy, and output rate were all considerations and the result was much more than just throwing some magnetite powder in a reaction chamber.There's a great book on the development of the process The Alchemy of Air https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Air-Jewish-Scientific-Discove...
⬐ kragenThank you very much!
This is a potentially world-changing development. If their figures are correct, and we handicap this technology to only see a 10% improvement vs. Haber-Bosch, that's still a savings of over 300 million megawatt hours annually with the added benefit of cheaper food worldwide since nitrogen is one of the largest costs in agriculture.I highly recommend the book, "The Alchemy of Air" about the creation of the Haber-Bosch process.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Alchemy-Air-Scientific-Discovery/d...
The subtitle doesn't do the book justice, but fixing nitrogen might be the most important discovery in the history of humanity and Hager's book does a tremendous job in telling the story.
⬐ hcarvalhoalves> This is a potentially world-changing development.... potentially negative?
It seems cheap, abundant nitrogen fertilizers is an environmental disaster waiting to happen.
Saves energy and increases other problems by an order of magnitude: water poisoning, algae blooms, impact on the fishing industry, acid rain and other problems by caused by NO2, nutrient depletion (by soil acidification), intoxication by metals (Al, Cu)...
⬐ mikeyouse> It seems cheap, abundant nitrogen fertilizers is an environmental disaster waiting to happen.Completely hyperbolic. Nothing you've described will be any more likely with cheaper Nitrogen.
Modern farms are extremely nitrogen efficient and runoff can easily be eliminated if the farms are incentivized to do so (aka appropriately regulated). Artificially keeping the price of fertilizer high as a pollution-control measure is needlessly cruel to the poor.
In many countries, the poor spend over 50% of their income on food. Reducing the cost of a main food input by a substantial portion would mean an immediate raise in the standard of living for some of the world's poorest people. It would also open up previously inhospitable areas to agriculture, further helping those in less fortunate circumstances.