I wonder if the solid state process could use windpower->battery bank electricity. The advantage of hydrous processes used in some electrolytic metals purification is I believe in some case you can turn down the amps provided the voltage stays up. The deposition rate merely slows. A generalisation of ammonia is what I'd call 'lightly bound hydrogen'. Martian astronauts are supposed to be making their own methane via the Sabatier reaction. Combined with the synthetic oxygen that will power their rocket flight home to Mother Earth. Otherwise not good.

Hydrogen could come from from low temp electrolysis of water powered by renewables (with lousy EROEI) or high temp dissociation of water via solar thermal or nukes. Perhaps a mixed approach could work. Note the solar thermal ammonia demo plant in Australia will be close to uranium mines so will invite comparison with nuclear.

Finally I wonder if we could stretch nitrogen fertiliser with composts and rhizome planting. Note that you can scald growing plants with direct application of synthetic urea. It may be better to add a small amount of urea to a sludge of charcoal and compost, except you need more machine effort to spread it on the fields.

Neal,
What capacity do electric powered ammonia synthesis plants have to use off-peak power or do they have to run at 100% capacity or shut down? If they can be flexible in power consumption this would work better with wind power, especially if sited close to major wind farms.

7,900 2.5 megawatt turbines is a lot of turbines. That is the size currently being put up around our farm. They are huge and I believe they cost about 2.5 million each. The 180 turbines cover an area that I would estimate to be well over 50 square miles.

At 2.5 million each the cost would be 19.75 billion. Having watched construction all last summer and even now of the Crystal Lake wind farm, 7,900 would be a major, major project. Construction of 43 more of this size wind farm boggles the mind.

Many farmers over apply nitrogen. A lot is lost in fall application in my opinion and early application in the spring can also disappear if there is a lot of rain. 170 pounds is way too much for a 154 bushel yield.

The rule of thumb is one pound of nitrogen per bushel of corn. But if crop rotation is practiced, and it usually is, soybeans add about 1 pound of nitrogen for each bushel of beans produced. On my farm that's about 50 pounds per acre. So I put on 125 pounds of nitrogen in the form of urea just before planting. The yield this fall was about 170 bushels of corn per acre. Urea was the only fertilizer I used because of high prices this year.

No doubt corn yields would drop dramatically without nitrogen application, but I doubt they would drop by half if crop rotation is used. Also spreading hog manure is a big deal around here as a source of nitrogen. I hate it because of the stench. But with so many hog factories nearby it is a significant source of nitrogen.

I had hopes some hog factories would shut down because of high corn prices, but few do. They seem to keep going and just absorb the losses.

Hello SCT, Nb41, CropDuster, et al,

Huge Kudos on this keypost! I was hoping you would weigh in on the nitrogen[N] of I-NPK flowrates to help spread the concern-->IMO, the Elements N,P,K,S & food supply topics are wildly unappreciated [even here on TOD] in their dire potential to really disrupt our global economy and civilization when FFs decline postPeak. I just did a quick article skim-->I hope to add more comments after closer study.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

What a WONDERFUL informative piece this is SacredCowTipper!!!

Those of us in production ag are often incredibly guilty (at least in my case) of knowing very little about where our fertilizer originates. I find it flabbergasting that the USA imports a larger percentage of N fertilizer than we do oil. Even more amazing is that this is a fairly new reality.

I don’t spend a lot of time in the true corn-belt, but I’m intimately involved with corn production in the traditional wheat belt. I eat, sleep, breathe, and concentrate on growing crops in the Northern Plains. I spent some time today with a grower who farms just over 50,000 acres.

In a continuous crop no-till situation in my corner of Spaceship Earth, there is absolutely NO substitute for commercial fertilizer. Fields often extend for miles without end. To ride across an individual field requires a full tank of gas on a four-wheeler. To switch these monstrous fields to composting/organic is unimaginable. It’d be like gardening the moon. Whatever one does with an acre, it must be done FAST, or not at all. There isn’t enough manure around here (except in pastures) to wad a shotgun with.

Last fall most of the acres in this area were planted with a minimum of fertilizer, or none at all. This is a first, and due to horrendous economics. (Cheap wheat, expensive fertilizer) There is some hope that acres will get top-dressed in March, but that’s generally inefficient, and time consuming.

My greatest fear is that humanity depends on our ability to fertilize everything in the Spring, which is spooky. In our part of the world, fall applications of nitrogen, with the drill, comprise most of the acres. We have WAY TOO MUCH work to do in a short period next spring. The logistics of moving endless tons of product is going to stress the system beyond its bounds.

If anybody is looking for a job next March, contact any commercial fertilizer dealer, next Spring will be one for the records if weather cooperates. If it doesn’t, well, whoops, there goes the Urban Poor.

Very interesting post. The alternative methods for producing ammonia are perhaps feasible in the interim, but it seems to me that in the longer run we will have to do agriculture differently -- the energy and therefore the ammonia just won't be there.

I think it is important to figure on not having the energy abundance, in whatever form, (and therefore the metals and minerals) that we have now. And this means the industrial infrastructure won't be there. So technological improvements in the current industrial infrastructure aren't going to suffice in the long run.

I'm hoping some of the agriculturally savvy posters will discuss how/if we can (gradually) become ammonia independent. Night soil is recycled in many parts of the planet I know. I know diddly about agriculture, but I also know industrial monoculture agriculture has a limited horizon. And so do we if there is no alternative.

Drought to cut S.American soybean crops-Oil World

HAMBURG, Dec 23 (Reuters) - Drought in South American
soybean areas will result in smaller than expected crops in
countries such as Argentina and Paraguay in early 2009,
Hamburg-based oilseeds analysts Oil World forecast on Tuesday.

"The drought has reached alarming proportions in some key
areas," Oil World said.

"We consider it likely that the lower than expected
plantings, dryness and poor germination will result in a decline
in the Argentine soybean crop," it added.

It expected a decline of at least 0.5 to 1.0 million tonnes
from previous estimates of 49.50 to 50.0 million tonnes.

Argentina harvested 47.0 million tonnes in early 2008.

"Paraguayan soybean production is expected to plunge to a
three year low of 5.4 to 5.8 million tonnes in early 2009, down
steeply from 6.8 million tonnes a year earlier," it said.

Weather in Brazil was also causing major concern although
Oil World did not give a new production estimate.

"The situation (in Brazil) is critical and could get worse
if conditions remain dry in December," it said. "Current
forecasts only point to beneficial rainfall in the northern and
eastern oilseed and grain growing areas."

You didn't show how much natural gas would be saved.

Ammonia reaction N2+3H2-->2NH3

For natural gas CH4 +.5O2-->2H2 +CO(which is further combusted to CO2 to provide heat for the H-B reaction.

So to make 90 million (global) tons of NG based ammonia you would need 64 million tons of natural gas ~2.8 Tcf of natural gas(world NG production is 100 Tcf). In the US, where almost all ammonia is from NG that would save .34 Tcf of gas or about 1.5% of US total.

So 1 ton of ammonia would require 44000 SCF of natural gas costing $220. The cost of natural gas ammonia is ~$200 per ton--so I maybe a bit high on the amount of energy.

For coal C + H20--> H2 + CO(for reaction heat)
So to make 38 million (global) tons of coal based ammonia
you would use something like 70 million tons of coal, assuming the carbon content of coal is ~50% average).
World production of coal is about 6 billion tons.

So 1 ton of ammonia would require 2 tons of coal costing $100.

With wind electrolysis you'd need ~10 MWh per ton of ammonia for H2 gas plus a few more tons for Haber-Bosch reaction heat, so 11 million tons of ammonia would take ~110 Twh of electricity(the report also says 110 Twh); using wind energy that's 33,000 1MW of wind turbines operating an average of 3000 hours per year. Currently the US has 20,000 MW of wind turbines.

So 1 ton of ammonia world require 10 Mwh of wind electricity
costing $1000 at 10 cents per kwh. Cheap energy is hurting our transition to sustainability. We need a BTU/carbon tax.

Ammonia production could be a way to relieve some of the wind/solar intermittency problem. Half the time wind turbines
don't produce meaningful power but 10% of the time they produce gobs of energy but that would require more electrolyzer capacity.

FWIW, I really like this report

Renewable Ammonia hits very close to home for me because fertilizer is far and away our largest crop input in $$. I view wheat and corn production here near the 100th Meridian as the “Stripper Wells/Tar Sands” of agriculture. We are the marginal, high cost producer of grain. We are a swing producer, responding in large way to small price signals.

A mistake folks discussing commodity prices often make is to disregard the marginal producer, when in fact; it’s the marginal producer whom determines prices. I’m not the greatest trader in the world, (just ask my broker) but I’ve hedged production for years using futures contracts, and the veterans tell me that extra 10% of corn supply we bring to the market makes FAR more than a 10% difference in price. At times, in can make a 50% difference in price.

Prices of grains, like oil, are set at the margin, with the price of the first bushel setting the day’s price for all bushels. Of course the last bushel is never for sale at any price, so those few extra bushels make an enormous difference in daily price fluctuations.
The reason I’m rambling is because so much of what is written about agriculture has to do with the low cost producers in the central corn-belt. The folks there in the steadier rainfall regions have little risk of crop failure, and will plant a crop to maximize yields regardless of market conditions. The farms most people associate with are “base production”, you can count on it whether ammonia is $300/ton or $1,200/ton. This is the exact opposite of the way we operate out here in “Next year country”.

A close personal friend who farms over 30,000 acres in New Underwood, SD pulls fertilizer off rail cars at his own grain elevator. Last fall he didn’t order one car of MAP or urea, due to the exorbitant prices. He will not fertilize his wheat this year at all. He will employ “Summer Fallow” to save on fertility costs, but this method merely mines organic matter, and is a short term band-aid. At any rate, idling half the farm to fallow means half as much wheat is now planted on his farm than he planted just two years ago.

To wholesale abandon nitrogen application on marginal land (as we've done in many cases) will absolutely drop production enough to raise wheat prices above the levels that many in the world can afford to pay.

The low cost producers in the corn-belt will ALWAYS do the heavy lifting, but it’s the marginal production on the fringes that will determine the price. Marginal production means minimal human contact, and vast acres per person due to miniscule per acre returns. Our system of agriculture needs cheap ammonia or we immediately shut down.

This factoid caught my attention:

"The total 332 million tons of emissions are 7.3 % of the estimated 4,500 million tons of worldwide emissions of CO2."

The citation of 4.5 GTons of CO2 doesn't appear to jibe with what I recall seeing; that the world emits about 8 GTons per year of carbon, which corresponds to ca. 27 GTons of CO2. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

What you may be referring to is that nearly half of the carbon emitted is removed from the atmosphere by the ocean and ecosystems. Is that where the 4,500 million tons comes from? It's a distinction between gross and net emissions. See discussion here: http://books.google.com/books?id=OkCnnMiXFMUC&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&dq=gross+...

This is an interesting post, on a worthy topic.

I was struck by the notion (see the first paragraph) that grain production needs to keep up with a growing population. I don't happen to view it this way. The population only grows because of such excess grain production. See this paper, for example:
http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/populatn.htm

with the following quoted from the abstract: "Contrary to the widely held belief that food production must be increased to feed the growing population, experimental and correlational data indicate that human population growth varies as a function of food availability. By increasing food production for humans, at the expense of other species, the biologically determined effect has been, and continues to be, an increase in the human population."

Next, let's look at where the grain currently being produced goes. I offer this graphic, a flow chart of the U.S. food system. It is based on decade old data, but the situation is similar today. About half of grains are fed to domestic (U.S.) animals, primarily ruminant livestock.

These animals grow just as well, if not better, on grass. Just takes them a few months longer to do so. The feedlot industry absorbs cheap grain and gives us lousy meat.

My preference: take about half of U.S. grain producing areas out of production and put them into pasture. The benefits include carbon sequestration, feedlot beef extinction, and less draw down on ancient aquifers in areas of marginal production anyhow.

Something that concerns me about inorganic fertilizer is that it permits continuous cropping, whereas organic methods require that field crops be rotated with nitrogen fixing legumes.

One key difference is what happens to the resulting soil carbon. When legume cover crops are used, soil carbon is added along with the nitrogen, potentially maintaining a mass balance of carbon, especially with no/low till methods.

However, when continuous cropping is allowed by inorganic fertilizer then the soil carbon more readily be lost. When the soil organisms have plenty of available nitrogen they feed on soil carbon.

It would be great if anyone with a background in soil biology and agronomy can chime in here.

Might biochar additions help mitigate the loss of soil carbon even with continuous cropping and inorganic N?

Thinking about intermittent electricity from wind farms. Storage of electricicy has always been a hurdle. Electrolyzers are off cause less economical when connected to an intermittent power source but elecrolyzers requires low personel and is belived to work well although not optimal when the power source is intermittent. One possibility is to have many units at same location. The numbers of units in use are then dependent upon availiable power.
The next process which produces ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen is more dependent on a not intermittent production.
If producers of hydrogen are spaced along a dedicated hydrogen pipeline then producers of hydrogen loads the pipeline with hydrogen at a rate which varies by availiable power. The users of hydrogen extracts at desired rate. The preassure difference in the pipeline will move the availiable hydrogen in the most desired direction. If the pipeline has a sufficient lenght and dimmension it becomes the ideal solution as it combines both storage and transportation of hydrogen.
This sceme could make wind as an electricy source more economical. Wind could become a peak load procucer of electricity rather than the oposite. When peak electricity is needed just switch off the elecrolyzers the hydrogen stored in pipline will still supply the ammonia producersfor some time.

"The nitrogen is free for the taking from the air........"

but isn't the nitrogen separated from the air by cryogenic separation ? that requires a lot of ng (or other energy) for compression. nitrogen injection for eor used to be(and that was a long used to be ago) required about 1 mcf of ng to generate 3 mcf of pure nitrogen.

here is a reference for cryogenic (liquid) nitrogen from wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_nitrogen_economy

per michael pollan 20 acre avg. for corn prior to fert/hybrids for corn.

from here;

http://www.economics.ucr.edu/papers/papers08/08-07.pdf

25/acre pre fert/hybrids.

so, much more dire than u'r ;

'The corn crop is raised primarily for its starch content and protein is not closely tracked. A sudden reduction in ammonia based fertilizer input here will have the same yield effect as is seen with wheat – a sudden plunge to about half of the current average.'

probably the yield of 1/2 is temporary & would revert to the avg. that held for yrs. & yrs. [see above link] & pre fert pollan says for corn only 2 yrs production out of 5 due to necessary rotation.

very very important post & work. thanks..

It's certainly a brilliant start to investigating the subject. However even in the limited context of TOD it is only a first cut. Basically it appears that you set out to find out how much nitrogen must be gotten somehow to keep current US grain production going. Vital information, but assuming that diesel, propane and bunker fuel for the grain ships will remain available in roughly current volume and pricing. Those are probably not good assumptions.

Then comes the next set of questions: The ethanol subsidy and feedlot animal culture. If it is so important to maintain production to feed the third world, why feed subsidized grain, grain bought for less than the cost of production, to animals? How many tons of ammonia wouldn't be needed just by converting the equivalent of the ethanol and feedlot grain acreage back to pasture? What about water? For all the talk about no-till here, there's also a lot of irrigated grain production.

And finally, is it good public policy at all to maintain the current grain production model? Yes, I've heard "feed the world" for 50 years. More recently I've been hearing about the destruction of third world agriculture and migration to the cities, just in time for peak oil.

I own 300 acres in New Hampshire. Yes, we can never do agriculture here like you all do in North Dakota. We could do a damn sight better if Tyson paid production cost for its' chicken feed and USDA policies didn't favor your 50,000 acre operator over Sharon, Nate and I from top to bottom and A to Z. And the whole world might actually eat better.

Many farmers didn't fertilize in the fall of 2008 due to the difference between grain price and ammonia price which may mean a 50% reduction in total yield and a a 40% reduction in protein in what is harvested.

Is this correct? Did you mean spring of 2008? Or in preparation for 2009? Are we talking about 2008 yields or 2009 yields?

How can we make something unsustainable, sustainable?

Do we do these studies because we fear the unknown? Fear what might lay in store? Population is subject to gravity, it can only go so high before it starts coming back down. To save modern day agriculture may help human population growing to nine billion folks. But then we will merely have to deal with die-off from a peak of nine billion instead of seven billion. There's no good way out of this.

The abyss, it will look back at you. Don't turn away.

If hydrogen is to be produced from non-fossil fuel sources the most cost effective way (apart from hydro electricity) will be to produce it in a Very high temperature reactor. The concept is already in advanced stage with a working reactor in Russia (which can be adapted to produce hydrogen if needed) and one under construction in China.

TOD contributor Jon Freise has published a report indicating that Canadian natural gas is on a path to negative EROI within the next six years.

Jon's report is total nonsense. I work for a large O&G producer in Alberta and I follow the NG industry very closely from multiple sources. There is no indication of any production limitations in the next six years or for the forseeable future.

Major issues for the NG industry are:
-- Mackenzie valley pipeline
-- availability/cost of capital
-- labour costs (currently easing)
-- steel costs (currently easing)
-- competition from US shale NG
-- softening of US economy/demand

Any decline of NG production in western Canada will likely be due to either lack of capital or lack of markets. The same generally applies to oilsands production as well.

The financial crisis is real and we will all have to deal with it.

The "energy crisis", IMHO, is mostly a figment of people's overactive imaginations.

Anyway,

Merry Christmas to everyone

On what data do you base your statement "Many farmers didn't fertilize in the fall of 2008 due to the difference between grain price and ammonia price which may mean a 50% reduction in total yield." thanks Billvon

Check out the website of Burrup Fertilisers who are the world's largest producer of liquid ammonia. Note they are opening a chain of vegetarian restaurants so the Indian owners probably have strong views on food and synthetic nitrogen. They have a new method for making ammonium nitrate but I can't find any reference to the solid state ammonia method.

Their mass transfer process seems to be completely at odds with wind farms. I believe the main use for ammonium nitrate is as an explosive in mining. However water soluble nitrates will be favoured if 'fertigation' or adding dissolved nutrients to irrigation water increases.

Christmas morning here but now I have to do a couple of hours of farm chores. I'll earn that pudding.

Hi Folks,

As mentioned above by Jewish farmer and Weather amongst others there are more sustainable means/systems to food production. A few other points I would like to point out are the inefficiencies in the current monocultural intensive application of nitrogen which has led to nitrification of ground water and is problematic in drinking water as it is difficult to remove and affects health (e.g. blue-baby syndrome)and the environment (here and here for an interesting presentation on ammonia)
Also the need to review the current system of 'comparative advantage’ that uses prime agricultural land to grow flowers in developing countries in exchange for massively subsidised food grown in by agribusiness in both the developed countries and increasingly in the remaining developing countries. As shown by SacredCowTipper this has led to an unsustainable reliance on imported food.
The work done by ISEC and the example of traditional Ladakhi culture show how indigenous traditions are quite capable of providing for adequate food even in a limited environment such as Ladakh. As for population – the recent blog by Jonathan Porrit posted recently elsewhere on TOD points to the problem and possible solutions, not least:

The lives of countless millions of women are devastated by their inability to manage their own fertility, and hundreds of thousands die every year because of illegal abortions or complications from unwanted pregnancies.

Happy Consumer-mas,
L,
Sid.

I don't think anybody has brought up the Paul Crutzen thesis that fugitive N2O from excessive fertiliser could exacerbate AGW
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrous_oxide

Suppose we had unlimited cheap fusion power and could grow hydroponic artificially lit crops in skyscrapers, with the ground floor eatery selling delicious 'home made' subs. If open airflow was used it might have to buy permits under cap-and-trade at some 300 CO2 units just to cover one of N2O.

It has been suggested that green cover crops are adequate for cereal needs. I believe much of the world's wheat is grown in former or evolving rangeland of about 200-400mm rainfall. I doubt you could grow peas, vetch or whatever let alone the fuel cost of plowing it in. I believe the FAO is talking about a switch from wheat and rice to potatoes as a major source of starch. Keep baked potatoes in the fridge as a snack instead of bread.

What is the cost for a small enough solid state ammonia system for someone with 40 acres and a wind turbine can use the ammonia system as a load leveler?

SCT,
How much money is needed for the pilot plant you mention? Is it the smallest viable solid state ammonia processor you can envision?

I would think that for a pilot plant the sizing is not terrible important, as long as the operating characteristics accurately scaled.

How big would the pilot plant be? How much output? Do you think it would actually be able to create product, or is it a throw-away pilot plant?

Thanks so much to Neal and co-authors (and those who commented),

for bringing up the "big picture" view of this important topic.

Some questions:

1) First - will you be updating this? I'd like to keep up with what you're doing. Also, Neal, could you please take a look at my question below about possible collaboration, including with other colleges and /or universities?

2) When you talk about Mexico and other countries...Once you take a look at "home security first", could you not "export" (...some food security strategies) - or think about and analyze the situation in Mexico, for example?

Sometimes it seems to me that the resource-trading (or, "horse-trading", really - on a grand scale) that goes on makes the use of national distinctions something of a hindrance WRT looking at ways of mitigating and looking at positive action.

Ditto would go for possible technologies (or sustainability practices, for that matter) - you bring up and those others bring up as well.

Could these not be shared in an open fashion?

Would this require some new laws to inhibit corporate actions? Or, could it be done simply in an "open'source"/TOD fashion?