瓶子里的閃電可以讓農民生產出環(huán)保的氨肥料

瓶子里的閃電可以讓農民生產出環(huán)保的氨肥料

Ammonia production is responsible for about one percent of greenhouse gas emissions, although this could be underestimated. That may not sound like much, but we worry a lot about the emissions of air travel, which isn’t that much larger. It's unlikely that nearly 8 billion people can live in this world without ammonia-based fertilizers, however, so a better way has to be found. Australian scientists think they're close.

氨氣生產約占溫室氣體排放的1%，盡管這一數字可能被低估。這聽起來可能不多，但我們非常擔心航空旅行的排放，它并沒有那么大。然而，近80億人不可能在沒有氨肥料的情況下生活在這個世界上，所以必須找到更好的方法。澳大利亞科學家認為它們已經接近了。

Ammonia (NH3) production currently relies on the Haber-Bosch process – which won the Nobel Prize in 1918 – but is badly in need of replacing. The process uses immense amounts of energy and relies on hydrogen, usually produced from methane, some of which leaks. “Green ammonia” can be made using renewable energy and electrolysis of water, but is currently very expensive.

目前氨(NH3)的生產依賴于獲得1918年諾貝爾獎的哈伯-博施法，但它急需被取代。這一過程需要消耗大量能源，并依賴于氫，而氫通常由甲烷產生，其中一些甲烷會泄漏。“綠色氨”可以使用可再生能源和電解水，但目前非常昂貴。

Stephen Luntz

“The problem with using electricity to convert nitrogen directly to ammonia is that nitrogen is so stable it is very hard to get it to dissolve in water,” Dr Emma Lovell of the University of New South Wales told IFLScience. “So we took a step back and thought about how nature does it.”

新南威爾士大學的艾瑪·洛維爾博士告訴IFLScience:“用電將氮直接轉化為氨的問題是，氮非常穩(wěn)定，很難在水中溶解。”“所以我們退后一步，思考大自然是如何做到這一點的。”

Lightning turns some of the atmosphere into NOx molecules, which then get transformed into other compounds, allowing this essential element to make up part of every living thing. Lovell and colleagues started thinking about ways to replicate this.

閃電將大氣中的一些物質轉化為氮氧化物分子，氮氧化物分子再轉化為其他化合物，使這種基本元素成為構成所有生物的組成部分。洛弗爾和他的同事開始思考如何復制這種現象。

Presumably, others have had the same idea, but Lovell thinks previous work has failed as "Expertise in plasma physics and electrochemistry don't overlap much. We were just lucky that one person working in each got a coffee together and things moved on from there."

據推測，其他人也有同樣的想法，但洛維爾認為之前的工作失敗了，因為“等離子體物理和電化學的專業(yè)知識沒有太多重疊。”幸運的是，我們每個部門都有一個人一起喝了杯咖啡，然后事情就繼續(xù)發(fā)展了。”

In Energy and Environmental Science Lovell and other team members describe a plasma bubble column reactor that first converts atmospheric nitrogen into NOx like lightning, and then electrolyzes water to make hydrogen that displaces the oxygen.

在《能源與環(huán)境科學》中，洛弗爾和其他團隊成員描述了一種等離子體泡柱反應堆，它首先像閃電一樣將大氣中的氮轉化為氮氧化物，然后電解水，生成取代氧的氫。

Having started with a very inefficient process, Lovell told IFLScience that energy use per gram of ammonia produced has come down 100-fold. She thinks further two or three-fold improvements are possible, which might finally knock Haber-Bosch off its perch.

從一個非常低效的過程開始，洛維爾告訴IFLScience，生產每克氨的能量消耗下降了100倍。她認為進一步的兩到三倍的改進是可能的，這可能最終將哈伯-博世擊敗。

In addition to the environmental costs of producing ammonia, existing methods require giant manufacturing plants for efficiency, which then means shipping the product worldwide. The world was reminded of the dangers when 3,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer stored at Beirut port exploded last year, leaving 300,000 homeless and at least 204 dead.

除了生產氨的環(huán)境成本外，現有的方法還需要大型制造工廠來提高效率，這就意味著要將產品運往世界各地。去年，儲存在貝魯特港口的3000噸硝酸銨肥料發(fā)生爆炸，造成30萬人無家可歸，至少204人死亡，這提醒了世界各國注意危險。

Besides not requiring fossil fuels, Lovell's method can operate at a variety of scales. “The technology could be used to produce ammonia directly on site and on demand...which means we negate the need for storage and transport,” Lovell said in a statement. The team is working on making a design that could run on-farm using nothing but air, water, and a few solar panels.

除了不需要化石燃料，洛弗爾的方法可以在各種規(guī)模下運作。“該技術可用于現場直接生產氨，并可按需生產。這意味著我們不需要儲存和運輸，”洛弗爾在一份聲明中說。該團隊正在設計一種可以只用空氣、水和一些太陽能板在農場運行的設計。

NOx gasses are both locally toxic and greenhouse polluting, but Lovell told IFLScience she doubts the closed system they are building will let any leak before conversion to ammonia.

諾克斯氣體既具有局部毒性，又有溫室污染，但洛維爾告訴IFLScience，她懷疑他們正在建造的封閉系統(tǒng)在轉化為氨之前會讓任何泄漏。

Solving one of the world's great environmental challenges might be enough for most people, but Lovell and her colleagues think they can help with an even larger one. Hydrogen carries many hopes as a way to store and transport energy from places rich in sunlight and wind to those where it is lacking. Senior author Professor Rose Amal noted, “Hydrogen is very light, so you need a lot of space to store it, otherwise you have to compress or liquify it, but liquid ammonia actually stores more hydrogen than liquid hydrogen itself.”

對大多數人來說，解決世界上最大的環(huán)境挑戰(zhàn)之一可能就足夠了，但洛弗爾和她的同事認為，他們可以幫助解決更大的挑戰(zhàn)。作為一種從陽光和風多的地方儲存和運輸能量到陽光匱乏的地方的方式，氫帶來了許多希望。資深作家羅斯·阿邁勒教授指出:“氫非常輕，所以你需要很大的空間來儲存它，否則你必須壓縮或液化它，但液氨實際上比液態(tài)氫儲存更多的氫。”

Recent advances in the easy splitting of ammonia to nitrogen and hydrogen raise the possibility ammonia transport could solve many of hydrogen’s problems.

近年來，由于氨易于分解為氮和氫，使氨運輸解決許多氫的問題成為可能。