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Taking a quantum leap into a brave new world

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Comments

Dan

An amazing YC asset is the landfill.

Our own production of methane.

Currently used to generate electricity.

How about also self-contained local production of nitrogen fertilizer?

Stone simple Haber process.

Plenty of electrical power to operate pumps, etc.

Dan

"In the early 1900s, German chemist Fritz Haber developed a system of heating nitrogen in the air under intense pressure to make ammonia for use as fertilizer. About half the nitrogen in your body is derived from this process.

However, the process has evolved very little since Haber was awarded a Nobel prize for its development in 1918.

We could not feed the planet without this energy-intensive technology, which consumes 2% of total global energy output. Yet bacteria have already figured out a way to accomplish the same thing at ambient temperatures, using a fraction of the energy input."

Why not use our landfill methane in the Haber process?

Anerobic bacteria in the landfill produces the methane.

Methane is fuel for heat, and feedstock for hydrogen.

Air is feedstock for the nitrogen.

Essentially free fuel / feedstock.

Therefore, as efficient as it gets.

And no need for a quantum computer to understand, maybe, someday, the fine

details of bacteria chemistry!

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