Creating Nitrogen Out of Thin Air
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 1:09PM 
In order for any crop to grow as efficiently as possible, it is necessary tocontrol the nutrient needs through fertilization. There are a couple ofnatural ways that nitrates are produced. Nitrates can be formed through aprocess called nitrification. Lightning can also create usable nitrogen bysplitting the atmospheric nitrogen molecule (N2) and then combining it withoxygen. The last and most heavily used approach has been the use ofsynthetic fertilizers.
Our design utilizes the second process of nitrogen “fixation”, where intenseheat and pressure produced by extreme electrical charges can splitatmospheric nitrogen and combine it with oxygen and water droplets toproduce a nitric acid. In order to control this environment we want to usean existing hoop house during a down time in the season, most obviously thewinter, to create very nutrient rich soil to be used during the growingseason throughout the farm.
We want to use a version of the Birkeland-Eyde process where an electricalarc is spread out into a thin disc through the use of a strong magneticfield. Air is blown through this disc causing nitrogen in the air to reactwith oxygen forming nitric oxide. This process can yield up to 4% nitricoxide by volume of air used. Once the nitric oxide is produced we wouldintroduce a mist of water vapor to create nitric acid which can then deliverthe usable nitrogen into the soil.
Some of the rudimentary calculations performed were based on someassumptions. The need for an average 5 acre (wheat) farm is around 4 tons ofusable nitrogen from urea. Through this process an energy need of 15 MWhcould create one ton of usable nitric acid. The average need is around100lbs per acre of used farmland. So we would need around 400 or so lbs ofnitric acid which equates to 3 MWh’s of electricity. At an average price of$100 a MWh we could produce the nitrogen needed for the farm at a cost of$300 plus the cost of the technology.
At any cost, this seems to be an interesting and feasible way to producefertilizer. But the question remains, is it organic or more importantly, isit sustainable?
Reader Comments (6)
Post by Josh Colborne and Seth Saxon
This is really cool, but I wonder how viable it is? It seems like you would be using more energy to create nitrogen than it would be worth...and maybe dangerous too?
Were any rudimentary estimates as to the ammount of instantaneous power requirements needed throuhout this process? The use of an electric arc would typically require high amounts of energy, making the electrical system for the farm increase in complexity
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