Highways are clogged with traffic, supermarkets are filled with fertilizer-growing stocks from faraway fields, and nearly every petroleum-based plastic we come into contact with. It’s hard to imagine life beyond our fossil-fueled world. Black gold has brought us unprecedented prosperity, but it has also polluted our environment, perhaps irreversibly, and its supply is limited. What to do? The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind. But it wasn't in the sad, unattainable way that Bob Dylan meant it with his famous lyrics. According to Utah State University biochemist Lance Seefeldt and other leading scientists, the nitrogen of life flows all around us and is the key to sustainability beyond non-renewable energy sources. The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences convened Seefeldt and 16 other nitrogen research experts in Washington, D.C., in October 2016 to discuss the current field of nitrogen-activated chemistry and its future directions. The team reports their conclusions in a review article in the May 25, 2018 issue of the journal Science. "This gathering is a 'who's who' in nitrogen research," said Seefeldt, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at NASA, president of the American Institute for the Advancement of Science, and conference co-chair. "Our team includes Nobel Prize winners By Robert Schrock, the culmination of our efforts was truly a powerful tour de force. None of us could write this report alone." Nitrogen is required for all life on Earth and exists in the form of dioxide for up to 80 % of a planet's atmosphere consists of life-sustaining gases. However, neither animals nor plants have direct access to nitrogen. "It's an incredible irony," Seefeld said. "We need nitrogen to survive, we swim in an ocean of it, but we can't reach it. Humans and animals get nitrogen from the proteins in our food. Plants get nitrogen from the soil." This was about a century ago when fossil fuels Where you enter the picture. German scientists Franz Haber and Carl Bäsch spurred the industry by pioneering a revolutionary process designed to break nitrogen's super-strong bonds and enable the commercial production of fertilizers. Unprecedented growth in global food supplies, thereby contributing to the growth of the world's population. "It's one of the technological marvels of history, but it currently consumes about 2 percent of the world's fossil fuel supply, so the carbon footprint is very heavy," Seefeldt said. What did he and his scientists conclude at the summit? It's time to start a new revolution. "Opportunities exist for fundamental improvements, new and different pathways [to achieve nitrogen conversion]," the scientists wrote. "But progress on this front requires a molecular-level understanding of nitrogen conversion reactions, and... Discover new catalytic systems and alternative methods of delivering the energy needed to drive these reactions." Seefeldt and his USU team, whose research is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, have pioneered a clean and renewable light-driven process to convert nitrogen into ammonia. , the main component of fertilizer. "Our study of this process, using nanomaterials to capture light energy, shows how sunlight or artificial light can power nitrogen fixation," said Seefeldt. "This is a potential game-changer." In addition to Seefeldt, the Science paper's authors are Schrock of MIT; lead author Jinguang Chen, of Columbia University; Richard Crooks of the University of Texas at Austin; Luo Kara Bullen, University of Chester; Maurice Bullock, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Marcetta Darensbourg, Texas A&M University; Patrick Holland, Yale University; Brian Hoffman and Mercouri Kanatzides, Northwestern University; Michael Janik, Pennsylvania State University; Anne Jones, Arizona State University; Paul King, National Renewable Energy Laboratory; Kyle Lancaster, Cornell University; Sergei Lymar, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Peter Pfromm, Washington State University, and William Schneider, University of Notre Dame.

Read recommendations:

LR14

Can lithium battery manufacturers popularize the component performance of lithium power batteries?

18650 3500mah battery.Battery maintenance

802540 battery manufacture

LR936 battery