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Comment by amoshebb | Hacker News Reader

The emphasis on containerization and strictly using green energy makes me skeptical about the underlying technology…

If this “lithium-mediated ammonia synthesis reactor” is really so much more efficient, surely incumbent nitrogen plants would be camping on the sidewalk to be first in line?

Maybe it’s different elsewhere, but here farmers don’t use daily applications of small amounts of pure ammonia, they get an armada of co-op spreaders to deliver and apply dozens-hundreds of tons of dry blend in one big shot and then do nothing for months. There’s a reason production is so concentrated, and it’s not because farmers haven’t realized air is the main ingredient.

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From what I can tell, the efficiency comes from logistics and not the cost. Those large plants are cheaper to run, but then you need to get that ammonia from the factory to the field. Ammonia is very toxic (your household Ammonia CONCENTRATE is 99% water! we are talking 100% ammonia here). Your truck drivers need special training to haul it, they cannot drive on some roads (tunnels). Farmers - the least safety conscience group I know of - wear gas masks and protective clothing when they work with it (they will drink roundup on a dare). Everyone in the chain of handling it needs extra safety effort.

This thing is instead a box you put on the farm which means much less handling of it. It also means you can plan to have it on time (fertilizer shipments are sometimes late - when you apply notrogen matters). In short this can be more expensive than traditional processes, but has enough other benefits that people will be willing to pay that difference (after talking to their accountant).

so, we’re observing the same things, but drawing opposite conclusions.

A box on a farm means much MORE handling of it, no? Currently no farmer I’ve met has ever handled pure ammonia, only UAN or nitrate/other dry solids. And like you said, they’d rather not. (although I also don’t know any who would drink glyphosates with how quickly they eat sprayers)

How does a box help with timing? Each farm must either store enough on site for an entire application (which farmers could already do if that was worth the cost) as it’s slowly generated, or they’re constrained by daily output of the box. Late shipments are bad, but a renewable only box running out on a cloudy week? No angry phone call to the coop fixes this.

Spreading the cost to centrally produce and store lots over many farms/industries seems optimal when one needs infrequent but huge quantities of anything.

A box on the farm means a little more handling on the farm, but nobody else has to handle it.

The farmers I know of work with "anhydrous". Urea and other solid forms are used too, but anhydrous is very common.

AFAIK this box isn't available to anyone yet. Farmers are interested, but only if it really helps. If it is less predictable than ordering and hoping it arrives on time (every once in a while you order something for delivery on some date and you don't get it then with nothing you can do even though the date is the date you need it) they don't want it. If it is more predictable because they can turn it on and be assured that there will be what they need on some day (despite clouds - which over a few months is predictable enough) they want it.

(I don't think many farmers have drunk glyphosates, but they would on the right bet and the SDS says it is safe enough to take a sip. Though the other additives might not be safe).

Anhydrous isn't common here, so the only way I've seen it applied is with shanks that cut everything up to inject high rates maybe not even annually.

So how would farmers familiar with anhydrous use "A box that makes 330lbs of ammonia a day"? Treat an acre a day? Apply a 1/300th rate and do 300 applications a year? Maintain a high-pressure 100,000lb tank of ammonia slowly being drip-filled until they need it all in fall? Buy 50 sea-cans and leave them shut off for 51 weeks a year?

I believe shanks are the only way to apply anhydrous. You need to get it into the soil or it will evaporate and do no good.

Your question paragraph is full of great questions that I don't think anyone has figured out. These things are still very new, farmers are interested because they have the potential to be better than what they are doing now. However it is all potential and how it works in the real world remains to be seen.

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