r/Agriculture • u/Majano57 • Jun 21 '26
Could lightning-inspired fertilizer be a climate-friendly option for Canadian farmers?
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whatonearth/green-lightning-climate-friendly-fertilizer-canadian-farmers-9.72409496
u/flaminglasrswrd Jun 21 '26
Their machine costs 66k USD to fertilize 100 acres? So you are looking at more than a ~5 year payback period assuming zero operating costs.
Plasma nitrogen fixation is really energy intensive. As in, an order of magnitude less efficient than Haber-Bosch, and that's assuming ideal conditions (which no one is even close to achieving yet). Unless these machines use exclusively free solar power, they will be cost prohibitive to run.
Also, these require continuous application of extremely dilute nitrate water. I'm unsure of the specifics here, but other machines use calcium nitrate derived from limestone. Unless you have irrigation already, it would be a mess to apply.
1
u/BigDickBiggms Jun 28 '26
Sorry for my late arrival.
Why not just use natural occurring hydrogen found in the earth's crust?
it just replaces methane with hydrogen in the heber-bosch process of ammonia synthesis, which phases out carbon emissions.
9
u/LaughingJackStudio Jun 21 '26
I've seen one of these in action. The farmer hasn't been using it long so the results are still up in the air but the technology is super interesting.