The End of Haber Bosch

This new process will not take off at all and I'll tell you why. any chemists worth their salt knows how to turn ammonia into explosives. How anybody with the most basic rudimentary knowledge on how to do a Google search and how to find KRplus videos made by other chemists demonstrating chemical techniques can make explosives from ammonia. The only thing that keeps people from doing it is the fact that most of our transactions are done via credit or electronically that can be monitored. Now you're giving a new technology that basically anybody could make ammonia at home? It won't be long before somebody with a chip on their shoulder and nothing to lose decides to go ahead and make an explosive device. No my friends As a chemist and an ACS member there's no way this technology will take off. You are just going to have to come to grips with the fact the man who saved almost a billion lives Yes also created chemical warfare... deal with it!

A very good use of electrochemistry.

I have been thinking that even if a large scale version could be built. the ammonia would still need to be converted to ammonium nitrate

​Actually, anhydrous ammonia is commonly used- injected directly into the soil 10 to 20 cm deep...

hahah so we are all going to starve but we will have electric cars lol

Mine asked us to pledge that we would give him 0.01% of the profits we made from the discovery. It would mean nothing to us, that small percentage, but it would still make him very rich.

@@williamm8069 Nah it's like the iron price but with more kaboom

There was a norvegian-patented process where instead of ammonia the product was nitrous oxide, and it was made with PLASMA!!!!! Sadly it was deemed inefficient (as in, it required a lot of electricity, which in that time was still relatively hard to produce in such quantities) and so the only one facility which produced PLASMA-MADE NITROUS OXIDE was built next to a huge hydroelectric powerplant and then it was shut down somewhere in late 1930-s. Still, i think it's very cool process. Aside from nitrogen-fixating bacteria in soil, this is how most of the natural (i.e. not man-made) nitrogen compounds are made in the wild.

​@@quint3ssent1ayes the birkeland-eyde process, inefficient but so elegant imo, just take in air and electricity

My old Industrial chemistry professor used to say: The Haber-Bosh process, bah! It killed more people than it made ammonia. That was referred to the original version (with the iron catalyst) that ran at about 1000 atm and had a tendency to go KA-BOOM lol

Or the alternative using lithium alkoxide and GOLD

​@@CatboyChemicalSocietybut you know who else is exited about this and has lots of gold? Arms manufacturers.

​@@JinKeeyea actually the gold isn't an issue since it can be baked on titanium with chloroauric acid at 600C and it wasn't pure gold but a mix of gold and something else.

@@CatboyChemicalSocietyright! Of course the biggest use of platinum is as a catalyst so it’s a less expensive alternative

I was under the impression those are used to facilitate the reaction and are not “consumed” in the process, as proton shuttles and electrolytes are generally not consumed.
Did I not pay attention?

Did you miss the part where its using 1% of global energy usage and producing 2% of the CO2?

But Fritz Haber didn't want to fix nitrogen for fertilizer, but for explosives used in war

it can be disliked for both reasons at the same time

@@badvillager9487 That's not the process' fault.

@@alexrogers777 You can. Its still odd to me.

Also the catalyst needs a high temperature to function

the right improved catalyst can change the balance, though, and is being searched for. CSIRO have a useful one that's in the process of being commercialised.

It is also because NH3 is endothermic from its elements; this explains also the "bad" efficiency; because making NH3 cost more energy than to destroy it; so making NH3 "stores" energy into the molecule.
PHZ
(PHILOU Zrealone from the Science Madness forum)

@@philouzlouis2042
Acctully is exothermic, if it was endothermic an increase in temperature would drive the reaction in favor to the products. (Because the temperature change the equilibrium constant)

@@henryrroland
My bad, sorry,
I really thought that it was endothermic because I believed that allowing H2 and N2 to react with each other at STP didn't produce NH3 (at least by smel undetectable vs the N2 and H2 gases; so it is only a matter of incresing the heat and the pressure and voilà NH3 is available; much easier than I thought.
Thank you

I too did 4 years of German in high school, same reason. It was pretty cool reading procedures in Bielstein and other journals in the stacks, but by the 70s it was changing fast. Who woulda thought the web would do away with local copies of technical papers and no one would need to learn a language just to translate a paper?
Now large language models and other machine learning techs will actually predict molecular modeling profiles, and we'll be screening thousands of new medicinal compounds, among many other new materials.... can't imagine what it'll be like in 2050!

It actually gives a great context to the thinking of the era, not simply blaming the guy. Plus making effective weapons is not necessarily an immoral endavour. If you invent very deadly weapon it might actually discourage future conflicts because they will be very costly for the participants. For example if Ukraine had nuclear weapons it almost for sure would not have been attacked conventionally by Russia, the same way Nato is not invading Russia to stop them commiting terrible war crimes, even though right now it would be quite a quick conventional war given what is remaining of russian military.

I see your Fritz Haber and raise you Thomas Midgely.

@@ukaszlampart5316 I could not have said that better myself.

@@TheeGrumpy you win if we're comparing those who died or were harmed by them in some way, shape or form. But if we're comparing the tragedy of their lives and how they helped people, I see your Thomas Midgley and raise you one Alan Turing.

​@@BackYardScience2000i see your Alan Turing and raise you the Fluorine Martyrs

But if we can knock off the 2% without any compromise, its huge win.

It's not only that. The used hydrocarbons should be let in the earth. No need to pump it up.

But since we need to get to net zero carbon within two or three decades, all of that CO2 would have to be compensated, driving up the price of 50% of the world's food. Which is probably a big deal.

@@unvergebeneid Yes at some point we need to do something. But creating fertilizer making machines to all farms will also emit CO2. And we can probably reduce the amount of fertilizer we need bay farming smarter, and that do not cost any CO2. I feel like we would get the best result by focusing our efforts on the lowest hanging fruits. People need to eat, and have a roof over there head at night thus I am more willing to allow this to "Cost" some CO2 emissions, than I am with fx transportation. And food will get more and more expensive as we get more and more climate problems.

​@@Petch85I think we can probably get the best results from trying multiple strategies to reduce carbon emissions at the same time, which is in fact something we can do as a society. Those scientists researching alternatives to Haber-Bosch do not in any way reduce your ability to advocate for more sustainable farming or get people to fly less

99% yeilds is possible for Li+ involving reactions, but... But please show me an electrolyser with 99% efficiency. Something lab-scale-like with area of several cm^2 perhaps, but the prodiction rate wouldn't be enough for a room plant, not mentioning some farmer.
The good question also is how does water getting electrolysed and why fossil fuels is still a thing.

@pyroq3 yeah, my thoughts exactly

The problem is the two long name materials they've put into it plus all the lithium. No system is perfect at recycling, and everything will break down occasionally. Amounting to tiny percentages of loss of the starting amounts of each of those materials on each cycle. Lithium has too many other good uses and the potential side products from the other compounds may break down or react with other things once they escape to do nasty things.
It's a nice sounding piece of chemistry but it has logistical issues at scale on the supply of some materials and safety issues on breakdown or escape of some of them too. The Haber Bosh process has it's issues, but toxicity of anything but the final product isn't a big one, the dangers are all in the pressures and temperatures of the reaction.

“A portable device anyone could use?” As the history of Tesla quite nicely illustrates, this part 👆 will NEVER EVER be allowed to happen by our ruling Oligarch CLASS. “Professional interests are served by making what is simple seem difficult.” ~ John Taylor Gatto

Yeah I cringed a few times at the logical hand waiving. You see this stuff all the time in published science and the whole premise seems pretty contrived for the sake of an engaging video.
The temperatures and pressures of haberbosch are not that crazy by industrial chemistry standards and the emphasis on them set off my BS alarms.

It’s the man’s name after all. Pronunciation isn’t optional. Such mispronunciation is a sign of either ignorance or hubris.

How we pronounce it in Scotland, too!

In English we also pronounce it "HAH-ber",
I think this is american

​@@PaulG.xsame in the Netherlands..

@@PaulG.x American here,I learned it as "HAH-ber." Though I could see someone who only ever read the name pronouncing it as Hay-ber,akin to paper.

Well, English _is_ a Germanic language, so it makes sense.

Well, 3 of the biggest chemical companies are located in Germany, so not the worst ideas to learn German.

The reason the Germans were able to get so far ahead was because during the industrial revolution, after the publishing houses in England threw a hissy-fit after their mandated premiums expired and enacted copyright, the Germans never followed suit, and would simply copy and add to English technical books, greatly increasing the speed of Germany's industrialization.

@@Shaker626 It all started with the printing press, when you were able to fast print information.

when i was at university, a BS in chemistry required 2 years of German, because "so much of the research data is written in German" - that was in the early 80s: I've just retired, having spent all those years as a professional chemist, and I've never ONCE had to read a tech journal or research paper in German - keep that in mind, kids, cuz the Dean is just after your money.

The video does not address the electrical energy required in the new process.

@@romanpolanski4928 Yes it does. It mentions a faradeic efficiency of 98%, which is EXCELLENT!

@@st-ex8506 No, that is the proportion of energy which is converted, not the total amount required.

@@romanpolanski4928 ​ I suppose that you are no chemist, otherwise, you would know how to easily calculate the total amount of electric energy required. That is obviously no criticism. But all the information needed is contained in the video... even if he indeed did not calculate it and presented the result.
Let me explain:
Have you noticed that the chemical formulas presented on the board at 7:10 were showing 6 electrons exchanged per 2 molecules of ammonia?
From that information + the faradeic efficiency, it is easy to calculate the electric energy needed per mole of ammonia!... or per kg, or pound, or ton for that matter!
This process is incredibly energy efficient, especially compared to Haber-Bosh, which is an energy hog of a process.

@@st-ex8506 The electrical energy also depends on the electrode potential a well as the number of electrons. Delta G = nFE, where delta G = free energy change, n = number of electrons exchanged, F = Faraday Constant, E - electrode potential. The Nernst Equation.
Thanks for revealing your ignorance.

Nitrogenase is horribly sensitive to O2 and CO. That's why the bacteria in nitrogen fixing plants are stuck in specialized anoxic nodules, which are both very difficult to genetically engineer into other crops and arent able to keep up with the intense energy demands of nitrogen fixation as they only have access to anaerobic respiration. Finding an O2 tolerant nitrogenase is the holy grail on par with C4 rice, and I'm still bitter that Streptomyces thermoautotrophicus didn't end up working out.

My first thought was “well how do nitrogen fixing plants do it”. I guess someone must have looked at that for inspiration.

​@@johningham1880unfortunately, the enzymes involved aren't easy to mass produce, and for the most part only legumes are able to fix nitrogen. They allow the symbiotic hosting of a nitrogen fixing bacteria that no other plant group can support/harbor

Yup! I have no idea what the feasibly of local, natural production would be. Probably not sufficient..
From Encyclopedia Britannica:
Nitrogen fixation in nature
Nitrogen is fixed, or combined, in nature as nitric oxide by lightning and ultraviolet rays, but more significant amounts of nitrogen are fixed as ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates by soil microorganisms. More than 90 percent of all nitrogen fixation is effected by them. Two kinds of nitrogen-fixing microorganisms are recognized: free-living (nonsymbiotic) bacteria, including the cyanobacteria (or blue-green algae) Anabaena and Nostoc and genera such as Azotobacter, Beijerinckia, and Clostridium; and mutualistic (symbiotic) bacteria such as Rhizobium, associated with leguminous plants, and various Azospirillum species, associated with cereal grasses.
The roots of an Austrian winter pea plant (Pisum sativum) with nodules harbouring nitrogen-fixing bacteria (Rhizobium). Root nodules develop as a result of a symbiotic relationship between rhizobial bacteria and the root hairs of the plant.
The symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria invade the root hairs of host plants, where they multiply and stimulate the formation of root nodules, enlargements of plant cells and bacteria in intimate association. Within the nodules, the bacteria convert free nitrogen to ammonia, which the host plant utilizes for its development. To ensure sufficient nodule formation and optimum growth of legumes (e.g., alfalfa, beans, clovers, peas, and soybeans), seeds are usually inoculated with commercial cultures of appropriate Rhizobium species, especially in soils poor or lacking in the required bacterium.

Sure! Here are the two papers, and, as always, all of our sources are listed in the video description:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg2371
www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05108-y

I thought it was quite BANAL and DERIVATIVE. You must be new on the internet

@@hamyncheeseOh hello there Prof. Gablogian!

For use with renewable energy the efficiency is not the most important, because the energy is free on surplus days or even negative. The capital costs must be low, because you only run it 30% of the time.

@@lkruijsw that's not true. Solar energy may currently be the cheapest, but it's not free. One of the key factors in the feasibility of any technology is the energy cost required to run it. If energy was free and unlimited then we wouldn't even NEED this technology. We would just spend obscene amounts of energy splitting nitrogen in less efficient ways. There would be nothing wrong with Haber-Bosch if we had free and unlimited renewable energy. We would just use that energy to hydrolyze water for hydrogen and heat the reactions.

Nitrogen fertilizer is awful no matter how you make it. There's plenty of nitrogen fixing bacteria that will do the job and then some if we stopped killing the soil and washing it away. Over 50% of nitrogen is lost due to poor irrigation practices.

@@philipm3173 I'd rather eat if it's all the same so I'm all up for making extra. The chemistry is clear, it's an energy intensive process no matter how you do it, so even bacteria are going to be slow with it (unless they don't make it and only retain it).
But yea, I'm not particularly interested in irrigation practices and fertilizer, I'm more interested in the ammonia for fossil fuel replacement and energy storage reasons.

Couldn't agree more with your nuclear option

It's (briefly) mentioned that the molecular hydrogen source for the Haber-Bosch process comes from fossil fuels. So even if the heating power is provided by nuclear, it's still a fossil fuel dependent process. Hence why it's important that the new process is looking at using water electrolysis for obtaining hydrogen.

@@ionparticle Electrolysis isn't an unknown process. It's well understood and VERY easily done. All you need is a rather large ammount of energy which is something that nuclear reactors ALSO very readily provide.
That's why I said the nuclear plants are good for the carbon neutral way of Haber Bosch. The process doesn't care where the hydrogen comes from it's just energetically a lot easier to get it off of fossil fuels. Not a problem if you have a LOT of energy and some water.

Per unit of time would be helpful.
Sq cm can add up quickly if cubed. If it's micro moles per sq cm or rather cubic cm then a volume 10cm×10cm×10cm might produce 1000 times 1cm cubed. Certainly though scaling the surface area well along with all the processes is going to be a challenge.

This device operates at 15 atm, as opposed to the ~200 atm of Haber-Bosch. The idea with farmers making it themselves is that it could be done on a much smaller scale than the giant industrial production we currently do, cutting out the need for ammonia transport and storage.

15 atm = 220 psi, which is within the range of some standard compressors running on house current/voltage.

~220psi is very doable in a farm or home setting with the right equipment, which I would think would be prebuilt and tested.

​@@BackYardScience2000I'd think a refrigerator compressor or 2 could do it pretty effectively.

Your car A/C compressor runs about 225-275PSI on the High side for comparison. Farm vehicle hydraulics run 5000PSI easy.

two other things i like are leela's arguments.

Renewable energy does not mean solar.
Wind does not stop in winter.

@@ireallyreallyhategoogle I can place between 8 and 40 solar panels on my roof * back yard. As of today, I am not allowed to place a windmill on my roof.
The "peak shaving" I describe is equally suitable for wind, as it is for solar, or any other opportunistic energy-harvesting technique.

@@AdityaMehendale You're talking about residential autonomy, but i was thinking more along the lines of national power generation.
I'm from Québec and we have nationalized hydroelectricity.
Between hydroelectricity, solar electricity, wind electricity and nuclear electricity, a country can easily produce enough power for its own needs and for export to neighbouring countries.
If all countries did this, humanity would have more than enough energy.
As for long term storage, we have batteries and if necessary we can produce hydrogen that can then be burned to produce electricity.

@@ireallyreallyhategoogle No matter, any non-deterministic power-source must be over-dimensioned, to be able to get by in lean times. Being able to utilize/amortize the peak production into something useful (like ammonia) seems like a win-win.

Urea is a nitrogen fertilizer made from ammonia and carbon dioxide that is in solid form. It could be used to match up the supply of power to the demand for fertilizer, which is mainly in spring and early summer in the northern hemisphere. The current challenge is that Haber-Bosch process has to be run at mostly a steady state and the equipment is expensive so it is run constantly 24x7x52.

Initially it'll be expensive but it'll be cheaper than HB process in future inevitably.

Not sure what you're asking; there aren't really good ways of separate isotopes chemically as far as I know.

Some reactions just need high pressure to accelerate the rate of conversion and lower the temperature( so less energy needs to be added). You can try to input regent into reactor at normal pressure but it would be very inefficient or not occur at all for some reactions.
. Good example of this is reaction of producing HCL where you put chloride gas into the water under the pressure to produce this acid.
In lower pressures some substances start to degrade rather quickly, or are in different phase.

For Haber Bosch, shifting from N2 and H+ or H2 to NH3 results in fewer total molecules, so it is favored at higher pressure.

Much less energy efficient

it is in no way safe enough for home production. Could be made so, with good engineering.

And having bacteria store the nitrogen in their bodies, it stays with the plants, you don't have nitrogen getting into the water supply.
Farming was a biological exercise over 100 years ago then chemical fertilizer was introduced, increasing yields. Then came increasing pests and diseases. Then came pesticides to fight them.
Farming now is addicted to chemicals which cost billions, making farmer's profit margin is so thin they have to rely on economy of scale to survive.
Sure, yields are big but costs are bigger.
The biggest cost is soil destruction by tilling and artificial chemicals, these kill the life in the soil.
Farmers need to learn about the "Soil Food Web". Then work with nature, restoring the life in the soil. Why?
Then farmers can grow healthier crops that pests won't attack, producing healthier food with lower costs.
Agriculture: it's biology not chemistry!

In countries like the UK, farmers are actually paid to leave fields to nature instead of growing crops. This must mean that environmental needs are as important as food production needs, if so the less intensive polycultures that self generate nitrogen might be plausible even if their output is smaller.

Legumes only add a net of nitrogen to the soil if you kill them before they have a chance to set seeds. They're great, but they require letting a field sit fallow for a season, effectively halving food production.

Ok fine, how does this help with our degrowth/deindustrialization/anti-capitalism goals?

That will work really well once population drops to about a billion folks! I look forward to your brave new world.

destilled water....

You realise that every plant needs orders of magnitude more water than would be needed for nitrogen fixation anyway right? Also, the amount of energy required to fix a unit of nitrogen is orders of magnitude more than required to desalinate it. Water is not going to be a bottleneck.

There are plants which have symbiotic bacteria on the roots that do it for you for free (maybe not as efficient as chemicals but still)

industrial farming needs (well, they think they need) simple and continuous--fertiliser from a bag or truck, no rotation.

The lithium works as a catalyst, and is not consumed :-)

@@melvillecapps8339 Yes, that´s right. My humble concern is that each of the many pocket sized ammonia generators contains some lithium and they all add up to a considerable total amount. In my opinion, food production could inevitably compete with the energy markets.

They're highly intertwined already. 1% or world natural gas goes into Haber process already. About 2% of total US energy consumption goes into making the diesel fuel that runs all the farm equipment and food transport. Estimates are that 45% of corn farming in the US is used to produce ethanol motor fuel.

@@TD_YT066 This is a could example of how important it is to see the big picture.❤

You gotta be careful when and where you use the n word.

The first nuclear plants were designed solely for the production of plutonium, with the heat produced being entirely rejected to the atmosphere. Electricity is just a side product. Nuclear plants are a government concoction for making weapons. Nuclear would be a more legitimate solution if Thorium were the fissile material.

Whoops! Good catch.

and also someone forgot to divide the equation by 3...

You have elections in 2024! I agree with your point about positrons, although the mistake is corrected later in the video.

please explain!

As a non-chemical engineer, watching this video was quite enjoyable, as well as usefully informative.
Also, did your mommy not instruct you thusly? "If you've nothing nice to say, then say nothing at all."

@@thomasgarbe8354 I think he’s saying that because chemical engineers usually have a deep respect for Haber Bosch

Mm, it's an important point: Haber-Bosch is not fundamentally wasteful in the same way airline travel is. It's really in the same boat as construction requiring concrete and steel, both of which produce CO2 chemically in their construction. It's a four square grid right, you have things that are Green and Necessary (woo!), Green but Unnecessary (ok), CO2 emitting but Unnecessary (alright, lets see about giving some of these up), and CO2 emitting but Necessary (tricky...). There are ideas being built up (green steel, reducing the iron using hydrogen gas instead of carbon monoxide from coal, renewable energy, and this video topic), but they're kinda early days yet, and we haven't really managed to fully transition yet, but there's some hope.

Scaled oxidation to nitrate is expensive and complicated as well. I think we're good for now.

Well, given France was barely holding the line at that point they get a free pass

@@noname-wo9yy I don't give them a free pass but seeing as this was tear gas and not poison gas they get do get a limp dish rag punishment

Seriously, flamethrowers are allowed, but I don't see that much of a difference, when it comes to cruelties.

Farmers pay for fertilizer, so they don't typically want to apply it if they don't get a return. For the most part, nitrogen fertilizer isn't the nutrient that causes problem in the ocean.

....and since they all are not, what might you divine?

I think it's clear that this isn't meant to be a chemist showing his chemist buddies new promising research and going ultra into detail talking about how it all works, it's a video meant for a very broad and general audience. And most people are not super educated on chemistry, so if he spoke like a chemist then the idea of the video would go right over people's heads. I would also like a video that went into detail but for most people they wouldn't understand a thing.

@@thatguyfromw1rk983 I don’t know chemistry. I still feel like the video was over-edited? Jumping between scenes mid-sentence too often. (Not entirely against such jumps, but going back-and forth between locations like this without any clear point, is distracting?)
And, like,
as I mentioned, I don’t know much chemistry. But I do think it would have been nice to show a diagram of the bonds in the Li_6N_2 ? Like, is it the thing I’m expecting, with 3 lithium atoms singly bonded to each of the nitrogen atoms, with a single bond between the two nitrogen atoms?
I also found it off-putting that he repeatedly expressed distaste for haber-boch process without, like, saying anything about why?
But my main complaint is that it seems scripted for an audience with a tiny attention span the way it has a cut every 20 seconds? (I haven’t actually counted the cuts, 20 seconds is probably hyperbole.)

@@drdca8263 Lithium nitride is ionic, so you wouldn't normally draw a diagram. It's a crystal structure where there are three times as many lithium atoms as nitrogens, but the lithium atoms aren't singly bonded to any given nitrogen. The nitrogen has essentially all of the electron density and carries a -3 charge and the lithium atoms have lost their valence electrons and have +1 charges.

@@kastonmurrell6649 Oh! Thank you!

Yeah, the way the host mindlessly dunks on Haber Bosch shows that he probably has very little knowledge on the subject matter. People without training in Thermodynamics very often severely underestimate just how unyielding the rule of the thermodynamic pecking order is...

HB doesn't have faradic yeld, it is not an electrochemical process.

Lithium is already in high demand for making the batteries of electric cars, so it doesn't work.

this process just produces ammonia though. you need more than just ammonia for an IED otherwise you could just make one with the ammonia you buy at the grocery store

Yep, smaller scale, more numerous organic (backyard) farms

go implement it then! do better farming make more profit and show them what you can do. Put your money where your mouth is!

Lemme know when you think the world's poor can afford doubled food prices.

this is why i scroll.. no subscribing.