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129 comments on A National Renewable Ammonia Architecture

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totoneila on December 23, 2008 - 9:47pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

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?

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SacredCowTipper on December 23, 2008 - 9:57pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I suppose I should be crediting you as part of the motivation for doing this. It might be a little premature to mention but we're developing a relationship with an environmental engineering company. We started talking to them because they can do the balance of plant work for us - buildings, wiring, piping, etc - we're just designers at a conceptual level.

They do all of that ... but their big claim to fame is municipal waste water treatment. I've yet to take up the discussion of how to recover the other two legs of the NPK triad - I want us to demonstrate some success with the market we understand first. I do envision us having a go at that in 2009, perhaps by issuing an ideation challenge via http://innocentive.com to come up with some novel recovery methods. Perhaps the biodiesel production is a vehicle - not benefitting the food circuit that way, but it'll be a nice start to cleaning up that dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico and once we get into the swing of recovering vital nutrients for some use the food aspect of it will come up sooner or later.

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SacredCowTipper on December 23, 2008 - 10:00pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

And speaking of disruption have you seen these?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/27/11143/168/114/667032

http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=838&pageid=28&pagena...

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totoneila on December 23, 2008 - 11:17pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Yep, saw those weblinks earlier, but always good to give newbies a heads up. I got to agree on your strategy to try and show success in ammonia [N] first--it will be the most difficult, huge flowrate to postPeak sustain if financing is mostly kaput and natgas goes belly up. P & K will mostly just sit in the soil until used [unless washed away], but N leaches and/or gas volatilizes away at a much faster rate--a real Red Queen treadmill of diminishing returns as our topsoil continues to deplete.

Just in case you missed this recent UN FAO PDF link:

ftp://ftp.fao.org/agl/agll/docs/globalfertdemand.pdf
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Forecasting Long-term Global Fertilizer Demand 2015,2030

[TABLE 3] North America N-only forecast: 2015 = 21.2, 2030 = 28.1
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Your article said we used approx. 17.0 in US ag last year and Domestic ammonia production was 10.7 million tons in 2007.

I think you got a hell of a lot of postPeak US work ahead to meet this demand if there is insufficient natgas and coal for making N, then insufficient crude to get it transported for the final topsoil square foot application. For example: You got just six years to DOUBLE N-production if our N-imports are cutoff for some reason on Jan. 1, 2015. Don't forget that Germany cut us off from K back in 1914-1918.

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SacredCowTipper on December 23, 2008 - 11:43pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I could really use some ammunition on these old fertilizer issues we faced. Do you have a basketfull of good links for me?

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airdale on December 24, 2008 - 9:20am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I have stated more than a few times on TOD that I believed the next to crash would be Ag.

Reading these two articles sorta nails it down to some degree.

Around here we don't dry our corn on the farm storage. Grain elevators do for the wetter corn so the propane shortage might not have been very visible. But the Nh3 costs have.

But lets think about this. Mass starvation? Where? Here or to those we ship grain to? Surely we have plenty for our nation's needs. Might be costly but its there.

The day might come and very soon when we have to look out just for ourselves, selfish that might seem. Currently some countries are playing political and economic games with oil. Russia for instance.

Can food be any different then? When they need our grain desperately will they still be playing hardball with their petroleum?

A governmental play for sure. Farmers just do the best they can and the prices dictate most of it.

The future is very cloudy on crops for this coming year. I have not heard much discussion because I think, they just don't like to talk of gloom and doom for fear it will self-fullfil. They shy away from such except very privately. This is I think because they are so very very deeply into credit. Massive credit. Unbelievable credit.

And I mean like millions...all backed by their assets. Land,buildings and machinery and usually not near enough to cover the loans.

So when a farmer of any size busts out. Its not pleasant and very big. They go down badly. Thats how I got my farm back in the mid 80a.
A bad time.

Airdale

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129 comments on A National Renewable Ammonia Architecture

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